http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com a look back more in hope than expectation... posterous.com Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:08:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/4ulw_oa_ZL4/windblown-controlling-the-elements http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-controlling-the-elements <p> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/hxf2IdnsBqhAazl6oP1Fts8ZRny8bxkhjZWgGNj52Wtvh34JMiZw6sDK7NVR/DSC_5938.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5938" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/AeLAqWDnqdy9N3jFHJmW3BcjS3BQaESocqblwXCdTrjmFzvACqPSeAM3oG8O/DSC_5938.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/5gAVmT41VpUmsw9R1fAwsBFlZB1RqrBBzAx6xMrN1YV6Df1cLoKA61rl5zOB/DSC_5994.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5994" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/5cXPCmhGAYwkkTYXb0WATEVbYhTL8awKZKt5d1QBzx7lVaTQpoFrC222b2Zw/DSC_5994.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/3R2BpBLnZ6mSsegNnXRJ9jNwp7GwjJGYY4ELGTntrGoleZNBCXdg4iUzgf2E/DSC_5997.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5997" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/gurFB54kCa7ayMAlca1F2g85rJ3rzyb9JczjhcFPiQomxGiOWPVeiU7YA7Ty/DSC_5997.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/iWnSPVbHSl3tQR3lPiXrKRK0O8gpV42JfcIkKYTatuyYcwbc2rLTYyGaq13M/DSC_5935.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5935" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/MBqFAFrKaizQVm0XLnUIxo5dZlOW8sr9uxECIHF0tJ9hvoOw7QrHJQ1viz8n/DSC_5935.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/TtKSASuc96XRwwAPG3Lb1YJNEo6ar3HqFb5W6EKFbmVz9fw7R9Dpg7q2aGpY/DSC_5926.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5926" height="312" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/M78xndaIs0QWmt9qDofVgDifzGuJulvEaRjToIi2tIrIwo9FlVygvMLKZold/DSC_5926.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-controlling-the-elements">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <blockquote> <div>"Transformation is in the head. If you have one thing and make another then there is no transformation, but there are two things. I don't think you would mistake one for the other." <strong>Jasper Johns</strong></div> </blockquote> <div>As I have noted in a previous article, I chose to present the images from my <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/wind.html" target="_new">Windblown</a> series as sequences consisting of the overall image plus three selections or croppings of the details within each image, observing (hoping?) that each one could nevertheless stand alone as a viable image in its own right. I also noted that the images themselves were made on a particularly bright, but extremely windy, spring day. As I had planned, this meant that the wind induced blurred movement of the leaves registered on the brightly lit surface, as one would expect, leaving the interior of the trees, sheltered from the wind, registered as still and dark.</div> <p /> <div>While recently revisiting this series, I realised that, were I to take the three detailed "cropped" versions of each image and overlay them with blends that would only replace elements in a lower layer with those elements of the layer that were darker this would result in a composite image where the the parts of the images that most conveyed a sense of (blurred) movement, essentially the brighter parts, would be replaced by the darker and more "still" parts. This would have the effect of "calming" their windblown appearance. And so it has proven. However, what I didn't expect and noticed straight away is that the resulting composite, though made up from three quite separate and different images, is wholly believable as an image in its own right. It is only on very close inspection that in one or two scarcely noticeable areas do they betray their identity as composite images. Thus they constitute a believable representation of a reality that never, in fact, existed. So much for the inherent truth of a photographic image...</div> <p /> <div>Still, in no real sense can these images be really termed artistic "transformations". They represent, quite simply, the result of mathematical, pixel by pixel, logic - unmediated by the intent of the artist/photographer. In other words, do what I did and this is what you get. There is no mystery to it. Except, as I previously observed, if one of the resulting images had just happened to appear to be a believable representation of a "real" situation that would have been, perhaps, to be expected. Pure chance, one might say. But five? Go figure...</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/wind.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Windblown</a></div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-controlling-the-elements">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-controlling-the-elements#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/4ulw_oa_ZL4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-controlling-the-elements Mon, 04 Jul 2011 06:09:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/Pe1_pU0y_n0/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si <p> <div> <div><span> </span> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/SBq4qoZTWiltefhWU1JnGBGnu8QLG4YPCXmegAo9DqhXeGG0eN5gUoLYOEgA/DSC_5613_-_Version_2.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5613_-_version_2" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/YOnEnDGPYjXXJJVbD8a2Yojyv2vuXLjLuswckGbkUopHHM92rWJy4tdJdm0U/DSC_5613_-_Version_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/vXQZMP5t7FIwgEUxNcAQyeyvWB4aTpNaxkt2e6rHb2YgEcglPWFWMHvktSWa/editions_1_s.jpg"><img alt="Editions_1_s" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/u0ZxU1XqD43THyLkDcd3OoZ41ZBlWQoLCu4z3HNOYW6izp9wEME04NDfGAna/editions_1_s.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/vbdFEmrC06pvuoPY1XxRYFIhj9d0Inmrg5olIrxWjFerS9iIufXPgYhNgy23/Touching_Metanoia.jpg"><img alt="Touching_metanoia" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/YbrQSWy3ytBiNmcdE5ibB3Lyoggl7BWBHmh2tsS5fc3YbKJDUVX28I4X7KOD/Touching_Metanoia.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <blockquote> <div>"Photography is subversive not when it brightens, repels or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks." <strong>Roland Barthes</strong></div> </blockquote> <div>The three images above share the same referent, a terracotta vase. So much is self evident for the first two images, not so much for the third, and of course the treatment (photographically speaking) of the subject varies greatly between the three. At any rate, looking again at these images, brought to mind the two terms ekphrasis and simulacrum, which, for me, represent central concepts of photography (and all art really). Concepts that raise questions of how and what photography (and from here on read "imagemaking" in general) can mean. They go to the heart of what a photograph is, what it represents (presents) and how (in relation to its omnipresent, or required referent).</div> <p /> <div>Apropos of this it was recently asserted to me that "everybody" knows what a photograph is. I would suggest, on the contrary, the exact opposite; for most people "what you see is what you see", and beyond that they give it no further thought. Most people view an image entirely subjectively. And why not indeed? That a photographic image should be pleasing, entertaining or delightful is no bad thing after all. Neither is the idea that it should inform (though here we are already on shaky ground...). It is no more necessary to think about "photography" to enjoy an image, any more than it's necessary to think about what painting is to enjoy a painting. It may enhance that enjoyment (it may even detract from it...) but it's certainly not "de rigeur". If your preference is just looking (glancing) at a stream of "nice" pictures then there is no shortage of grist for your particular mill available online. If you're still here, reading, then I shall attempt to clarify some of the issues behind an exploration of what a photograph may be, using the three images as (not entirely satisfactory) examples...</div> <p /> <div>According to Wikipedia the definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekphrasis" target="_blank">ekphrasis</a> is:</div> <p /> <div><strong>"Ekphrasis</strong> has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description."</div> <p /> <div>I'm not entirely sure whether they represent a "brilliant description", but the the latter two of the images above could be said to "define and describe the *essence* (my italics) of the object in question" be it the shape and overall form of the vase, or the detail and texture of a part of it. In short, due to this perceived "transformation" of the referent depicted in the images they look like art (whether good or bad art is another question...); they represent exactly what, or so it would appear from my online experience, for most people most seems like an "artistic" image. To which end a judicious bit of blur and, shall we say, "mysterious" air of obscurity (what exactly is the third image a photograph of?) can only contribute. In comparison the first of these images seems a "mere" simulacrum. And indeed it is the "simplest" of the three images. I merely set the stage and placed each object centrally in the frame for its moment in the spotlight (figuratively speaking, of course... the lighting could hardly have been flatter or more straightforward). In fact "mere" simulacrum was my total intention here...</div> <p /> <div>Wikipedia defines <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum" target="_blank">simulacrum</a> as:</div> <p /> <div><strong>"Simulacrum</strong> (plural: simulacra), from the Latin simulacrum which means "likeness, similarity", was first recorded in the English language in the late 16th century, used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a god. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Philosopher Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real. Other art forms that play with simulacra include Trompe l'oeil, Pop Art, Italian neorealism and the French New Wave."</div> <p /> <div>Of course, the photographic image could also be viewed as a sort of original in its own right. And it is true that in virtually all "Photorealist" paintings are copied from photographs not the motif itself. In any case Photorealism was a relatively short lived art movement (it represented an artistic dead end in reality) although it is itself still still practiced but more commonly termed "Hyperrealism" these days. Which brings us to an interesting point: for Plato and most philosophers the concept of the simulacrum is always tinged with a sense of the inferior. But not so for Baudrillard, who argued that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal (for more detailed discussion of this please see the original piece on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacrum" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>). In any case none of the images above could in any real sense be termed "copies", faithful or otherwise, of the vase itself therefore concepts of "inferiority" would seem irrelevant. And yet... in many ways, too, the image is inferior to the referent. It cannot be used for any practical purpose (it doesn't "hold water"?) and viewing the image could hardly be said to impart more information than viewing, handling and turning the original would. In this sense the image is less than the original.</div> <p /> <div>And so, it seems to me, Baudrillard is entirely right here; not least because it is my intention that the prints of the images from this <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/precious.html" target="_blank">series</a> be around 3ft x 4ft in size (which in itself would represent a certain shock element for the viewer). That apart, there is still a sense that the image of the vase has something of the "more real than the real thing" about it. Almost a heightened sense of reality. In other words, the "hyperreal". Add to that the scale which has the effect of superimposing a sense of the surreal (sur-real) too. Or should I say, once again, a heightened sense of the surreal (surreality being arguably the natural state of all photographs). But still, confronted with the "reality" of the outsized image of the viewer would be justified, perhaps, in enquiring "Why make an image of a mundane object like that at all?" And too, such an unprepossessing example of such an object. What is the viewer to think? How is the viewer to "read" such an image? &nbsp;It turns out that this seemingly obvious question (with no doubt, for some, more than one "obvious" answer) is not so simple after all...&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>Roland Barthes, perhaps the most often consulted thinker on the problem of exactly what a photographic image "really" represents for us, has called the photograph (any photograph that is) a "message without a code". On the face of it that seems a difficult if not meaningless phrase. But it really is not difficult at all, although it would be if I were to attempt to explain it. So I shall here quote from *Roland Barthes &ndash; Camera Lucida (1980)* by Graham Allen of the University of Cork (I would also highly recommend reading the article in its entirety, it can be found <a href="http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/iml101/101palette/barthes.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>):</div> <p /> <div>"In various earlier essays Barthes examines the major problem presented by photography. In essays such as &ldquo;The Photographic Message&rdquo; (1961) and Rhetoric of the Image&rdquo; (1964) Barthes had looked at the difference between photography and all other representational forms (see Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Hill and Wang, 1985: 3-20, 21-40). All other forms of representation, even other image-based forms such as cinema, drawing and the theatre, translate the referent of their representation into a secondary language with distinct codes and conventions. We can admire the accuracy of a drawing from life, for example, but we also always remain conscious that life-drawing has established codes and conventions: perspective, styles of shading, etc. We may well, during the time of viewing, believe in the &ldquo;reality&rdquo; of a film, yet we also cannot escape the fact that cinema is a narrative art involving codes of narration, emplotment, sequencing and so on. Photography, on the other hand, seems to rely on no secondary set of codes and conventions, no secondary language, to represent its referent. Despite the obvious existence of the set pose of the subject, or the choice of backdrop or lighting, or even the use of various &ldquo;tricks&rdquo;, the object represented in the photographic image seems to be identical to the referent of representation. Photography, unlike any other form of representational art, seems to present us with what Barthes called a message without a code.</div> <p /> <div>It is possible, of course, to discuss the manner in which photographic images are used to establish semiological or secondary-order meanings. Barthes in &ldquo;Rhetoric of the Image&rdquo;, for example, returns to a subject he had already discussed in his Mythologies: the use of photographic images in advertisements. Photographic images in such contexts can generate a whole host of secondary (&ldquo;mythical&rdquo;) meanings. However, there seems to be a literal or uncoded level of photographs which is troubling to a semiological approach such as the one adopted by Barthes in the early 1960s. Based on the interpretation of secondary levels of meaning, semiology seems capable merely of suggesting that photography is a medium which possesses a code of direct referentiality; a rather poor solution, some might say, to the problem posed by photography.</div> <p /> <div>The problem posed by photography, as if signaling its status as an unresolved issue, returns in Barthes's work of the 1970s. In his 1970 essay &ldquo;The Third Meaning: research Notes on Several Eisenstein Stills&rdquo; (The Responsibility of Forms: 41-62) Barthes sets up a distinction which will ultimately lead to the theory expounded and explored within Camera Lucida. Looking at stills from various films by the Russian film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, Barthes distinguishes three levels of meaning: the <strong>informational</strong> level which involves what the image directly communicates; the <strong>symbolic</strong> level which concerns the complicated but ultimately communally understood symbolisms present within an image, and the <strong>obtuse</strong> meaning &ndash; which is contrasted with the obvious meaning that Barthes argues is presented by the symbolic level of the image. The obtuse meaning could be defined as those features of a still or photographic image which seem to produce or convey a meaning but which do not form part of any recognizable symbolic system. This is a kind of meaning, therefore, which appears to be unique to the response of the individual viewer (reader) of the image."</div> <p /> <div>I think what Barthes is saying here is that, unlike for speakers of any particular language, for photography there is no commonly agreed system of symbols and codes for reading a photographic image, without which precise communication is difficult if not impossible. Imagine if you will attempting to communicate if we all spoke our own personal "language" (for more on the origins and nature of spoken language I highly recommend "The Order of Things" by Michel Foucault). In that sense one could say that the *concept* at least of photography was invented at the Tower of Babel. This should be a sobering thought to all those who think their images "speak for themselves"...</div> <p /> <div>In fact, it is because of this that I make such efforts as I do here with this blog to at least attempt to clarify the meaning and thinking behind what I do. Which brings us satisfyingly full circle, for the use of language to "represent", clarify and more fully express the intent behind visual imagery is yet another form of ekphrasis...</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/precious.html" target="_blank">Objectively Speaking :: 50 Precious Things</a></div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/states/albums/sache.html" target="_blank">Objectively Speaking :: Epreuve d'Artiste</a></div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/stufen.html" target="_blank">Objectively Speaking :: Stufen Der Scheinbarkeit</a></div> <span>&nbsp;</span></div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/Pe1_pU0y_n0" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/photography-and-photorealism-ekphrasis-and-si Sat, 18 Jun 2011 05:27:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/jT6ICiBhb7A/windblown-the-accidental-landscape http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-the-accidental-landscape <p> <div> <div><span> </span> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/XoHXJAZmLsnRzNHAwMLm9v65L74hin7HflWGIORa8ATNuLn1vUQGcoR9WRXp/DSC_5935.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5935" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/kkOzUS0CAIHBM1gObMT9DD4aFyxs5N8r2FEFcjzqvoxfoj6rZ5Jdqaak4Hly/DSC_5935.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/V1XjBpDJ2ow35TxPSggMlUVtbwOwH2SPKSmwiAPDMCcqLct44HZdQ9J1wZsX/DSC_5935_-_Version_2.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5935_-_version_2" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/nC3fsVJmyLFB0GlaEPhw0yXGWYkhdRWvrY2FG3yQw5cfxTqMcuPkU5T5FBt6/DSC_5935_-_Version_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Gt7ox7AgViiSK3Z8a0hfjpQ3jQNvdf9M6WRPc6aX4R5wz2oRhTRyZYORVZPl/DSC_5935_-_Version_3.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5935_-_version_3" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/32pPnfR4QJ60CMn61kmWDeDowto7sXM1mqpNLpqVq1ZJxydbHejcQAdODiKb/DSC_5935_-_Version_3.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/TcZGwwDv7NKsug3GKPSIYhFWzXDTHUbbuxTFus8W57BeInKWgHFLAgmfMLQ6/DSC_5935_-_Version_4.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5935_-_version_4" height="313" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/nqZ5iupVwi5pcqkbWoIRx81nSmYzwAQe2HFfwzXuTCD7cF3IVJiugQiksA8u/DSC_5935_-_Version_4.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/u2ZaGYYoXrQ6g7lcSdam6B5xP8ZJN9gmyGhDhRGMzGTuQ8VxAXsLBf0iZWbz/4976-mr-and-mrs-william-hallet.jpg.scaled.1000.jpg"><img alt="4976-mr-and-mrs-william-hallet" height="660" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/HLrRjZh893Ab5Ynsnh0maZBuUoRv4hYbgvALZlav7y0UHEOh3CK3qutwNB7R/4976-mr-and-mrs-william-hallet.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-the-accidental-landscape">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <blockquote> <div>"Landscape is not a genre of art but a medium.</div> <div>Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the other. As such, it is like money: good for nothing in itself, but expressive of a potentially limitless reserve of value.</div> <div>Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture. It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a package and the commodity inside that package."</div> <p /> <div><strong>W.J.T. Mitchell</strong></div> </blockquote> <div>In a recent online conversation with friend and fellow photographer <a href="http://pixelatures.posterous.com/" target="_new">Anna Lee Keefer</a> I expressed the opinion that there were very few great photographs of trees. It would seem almost everybody has had an irresistible urge to try but most of the results, it seems to me, have resulted in, what I would call at best, "nice" pictures of "nice looking" trees. Very few express anything about "trees", their essence, their "tree-ness" if you like. Well, it IS difficult to do I think. I think too that painters have often been more successful here...</div> <p /> <div>However, a couple of days after this conversation, and by sheer coincidence we had one of those days when the sun was shining brightly in combination with swirling and extreme gusts of wind which I noticed was having a spectacular visual effect on the trees in my garden and the surrounding ones. Using my camera with the longest zoom I had, with a small aperture and fairly slow shutter speed (thank heavens for Image Stabilised long lenses...) I shot a few images; once I had figured out the "rhythm" of the gusts such that I could more or less predict them and be prepared that is. After a few quick edits I set the resulting images aside to return to later for further study and to decide exactly where I wanted to go with them, as is my usual practice.</div> <p /> <div>As it turned out, a couple of weeks later I was in the National Gallery, London, with my wife Desir&eacute;e for a quick visit just to look again at some old favourites there. Since I had made the windblown tree images there had been a vague notion in my mind that I had seen something very like the images I had made; a sort of feeling of deja vu but nothing specific. Standing in front of the Gainsborough painting, <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/thomas-gainsborough-mr-and-mrs-william-hallett-the-morning-walk" target="_new">Mr and Mrs William Hazlitt</a>, otherwise known as "The Morning Walk" and shown above, it came to me: many of Gainsborough's commissioned portraits, while obviously painted in the studio, were "placed" within a sort of "Romanticised", and very "English", landscape setting. An imagined landscape at that, most likely. But not perhaps "certainly"; though Gainsborough in his career produced over 500 mostly commissioned portraits and only 200 works that could even vaguely be termed "landscapes" (most of which never saw the light of day in his lifetime) he always considered himself, first and foremost, a landscape painter. His true love obviously. And, too, he subsequently proved to be a source of great inspiration to that other great man of Suffolk, John Constable. As a sidenote, it may come as some surprise to many that I love the kind of so English landscape painting like Constable, Cotman, Palmer et al (maybe that I love Turner too would be less of a surprise...) but I do indeed adore them.</div> <p /> <div>Be that as it may, most of Gainsborough's "landscape" settings suffer the fate of landscape painting in general for the overwhelming part of the history of art; they are mere "parergons" (or byworks) to the Argument (main subject) of the work; if not mere background portraits often as not a setting for historical or mythical events which represented art's "highest calling". Coincidentally the fate, too, of the genre I have been most associated with; still life. And for that reason I guess I have grown accustomed to seeking out the "parergon" in works, the detail, the "overlooked" if you like. Anyway, back to the "Morning Walk"... looking ever closer at the painting (it is rather large) I noticed that the branches and leaves of the trees in the background of the painting had something of the look of my windblown images; they were obviously "in motion" (this "effect" is in fact more noticeable in front of the actual painting than in most reproductions). Once I had ascertained this I started to see this "effect" everywhere in other s of Gainsborough's work in the gallery. Curiously it was noticeable too in several works by Rubens, who of course worked extensively in England (not, of course, that I'm claiming it is a purely English phenomenon...). I began to wonder whether this "effect" or phenomenon had maybe in some way registered subconsciously with me before. More importantly, though, I wondered too why this effect had been used so extensively. Was it simply to impart a feeling of "dynamism" to the setting (which indeed it does)? Subsequently I began to notice that, in fact, and maybe especially in Britain, totally still days are a rarity. On the great majority of days the leaves and branches of trees always register some degree of windblown motion. To depict trees totally "frozen" as it were would represent a lie in fact...</div> <p /> <div>Returning to my images it thus became easy to see them, notionally, as details, or parts, parergons of a larger whole; be that whole a setting for a main subject or a part of a more extensive landscape view. In that sense I could choose to see these images as not specifically "tree portraits" but as "landscape" too. And more... when I scanned across the images shown at full size, pixel for pixel, on my screen I began to see further completely valid images formed from the details; a sort of detail of details, parergons within parergons as it were. Thus I have decided to present these images as a whole plus three other "possibilities" (crops) too. I hope and trust each resulting image is able to stand on its own too as a cohesive representation...</div> <p /> <div>Landscape is a photographic genre I have deliberately avoided in the past. Too much of it, it seems to me, being fit only for chocolate boxes or the bourgeois interior design of the artless who wish to appear "cultured" (many paintings, too, of course come into this category...). Nevertheless I have always harboured a borderline interest in Land Art for example. There is of course far more to the landscape genre (and related ones) than just "nice views" or, another of my pet hates, the utterly facile "gee, isn't nature wonderful" style of representation. There is much art that doesn't look like "landscape" art but is nonetheless very much about it too. It is in fact a genre worthy of far greater exploration. I can feel myself steadily being drawn in...</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/wind.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Windblown</a></div> <span>&nbsp;</span></div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-the-accidental-landscape">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-the-accidental-landscape#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/jT6ICiBhb7A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/windblown-the-accidental-landscape Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:24:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/AorkKbkRweU/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness <p> <div> <div><span> </span> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <img alt="Blocks_grid_02" height="800" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/4tpWbIPgDSKqaI8FdiX3Ra35idaXiAe2VtHxjrxmDbnt86pRNGcmczG3gMMT/Blocks_Grid_02.jpg" width="500" /> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/5FAXHU2NLG1B7EMxwSsCaNdzOlLJnUr9acZXOtQA9kx2QzvogKXHMKGZXr4I/Blocks_Grid_06.jpg"><img alt="Blocks_grid_06" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/vDSgJ9muoArsjh51P5lJCmMFxyKsGWw0ORh0s3JebivF2X9DVSqrWbUhxgCz/Blocks_Grid_06.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/RiHhn9e1gmN0bSP2btFZv9It9XMffXkne3CoQavPQzXV9Bo3PEFEb4EKjCTB/Blocks_Grid_05.jpg"><img alt="Blocks_grid_05" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/bxCEKhoOc89ysnPG3qySR2JtNMWlycO5msghKT6UKJqO7WXop9aqh0XTuPMm/Blocks_Grid_05.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div>When I first decided to create grids of my "remastered" <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/masters/albums/blocks.html" target="_new">Block Matrices</a> images my intent was to simply explore the tendency of all humans to seek patterns in such grids where there were, in fact, none (or at least no intention to create any particular order or pattern). To achieve this I used fairly standard Page Layout software (Adobe InDesign) and, for my first attempt (shown in my previous post) simply imported the eight images into a 2x8 grid in date order (simply the order in which the images were originally created). Looking at the result I thought to then attempt to "arrange" the cells of the grid to make a more "pleasing" composite image. By this I mean simply to arrange the cells so that the intersections of the cells were less "jarring" (or as "seamless" as they could be). This attempt rapidly degenerated in to a more or less complex and tedious exercise in "shuffling" the cells to less and less effect. While not "perfect" the original, purely arbitrary, grouping was seemingly impossible to improve on. At this point I should emphasise that no attention was paid to any notion of "pattern"; I was simply considering, as I say, the "jarring" aspect of the meeting points of the cells. OK... mistake number one: I was attempting to apply a personal concept of "aesthetics" here and it wasn't any improvement on the original purely arbitrary first attempt. I am not saying that this attempt could not be improved on but merely that the complexity required to do so (even with the relatively small number of discrete elements involved) was daunting, to say the least.</div> <p /> <div>All of this got me thinking about the essential nature of pattern and order in relation to grids and concepts of randomness. This led to my conducting some research into the field of "Information Aesthetics" first formulated in Germany by <a href="http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/1939/Max-Bense.html" target="_new">Max Bense</a>, founder of the "Stuttgart School". At this point I had already, by copying, flipping horizontally and vertically the elements "en bloc" as it were, further developed my original grid to form the first image shown above. This ordered manipulation naturally results instantly in a system of symmetry and patterning. According to theories of information aesthetics the resulting "shape" engendered by this process is termed a "Supersign" or "Supersymbol" which simply means that the introduction of orderliness results in the perception of a larger structure made up of the smaller discrete elements. More than mere "patterning" this arrangement has become about form and shape. For me the "shape" formed conjures up a "mechanistic" feeling; in actual fact it reminds me vaguely of some sort of spark plug. But that might just be me...</div> <p /> <div>In any case, thus far, any notions of what the image may resemble are still, in fact, based on a fairly arbitrary manipulation of the grid elements. Still further, according to the thinking of Bense and others, this tendency to see form and shape as well as. or even at the expense of, mere patterning is a function of the grid elements touching and so forming these notional "supersigns" or larger entities. As soon as the "cells" are separated by white space the whole notion, or effect, of "supersigns" is broken and the more pure "patterning" may be observed. I had observed this, of course, when going back to my original inspiration; Richter's Colour Chart paintings. Where the elements (rectangles of colour) are touching there is a tendency to form these shapes, or "supersigns", in one's mind; where Richter introduces white space between the elements of his grids, this tendency breaks down and "pure" patterning takes over. The white spaces of the grid patterns rule out the possibility of grasping the painting as a whole in terms of its colouristic determination. And, too, as the grids get larger with more discrete elements (or the white spaces become wider) the visual complexity of the chaotic structure exceeds the eye's ability to adapt. Nevertheless, and allowing for the pure randomness of the arrangements of colours, it is noticeable how &lsquo;non-random&rsquo; the panels look, with some dominated by particular colours which are often placed next to each other. However, the whole point of "pure" randomness is that apparent patterns are still expected to occur.</div> <p /> <div>Still using the same arbitrary arrangements, but with increasing complexity in the "flipping" and "mirroring" of the elements I created some grids discretely separated by white space of varying widths and the theory holds good; even allowing for the differences between images and simple colour charts. Here I should add that I use the term "arbitrary" instead of "random" deliberately. For my grid arrangements to be truly random would require an understanding of maths and random algorithms, not to mention the programming or scripting skills to apply them to the software I used, that is sadly beyond me. In only one instance did I stray from the path and method of arbitrary choice I had set myself: In the third image above I used a mathematical construct known as a "Latin Square" (Sudoku fans, of which I am not one, will recognise it as a simplified version of the squares used there). In this grid construction a number (1-8) is assigned to the images and they are imported into an 8x8 grid such that each image appears in every line but never twice numerically in the same cell. This strict mathematical sequencing nevertheless looks the most arbitrary or random to me...</div> <p /> <div>Future directions... I intend to come back to these concepts at some future point. Possibly when I have figured out (or gained some assistance in figuring out) how to sort the images in a truly random fashion and possibly with greater complexity as to the images used. I am in fact interested in the whole issue of apparently pure randomness and how and what it looks like. It is possible that so strong is this tendency to seek to "create" patterns in the mind that even the most arbitrary randomness still results in something "recognisable". Conversely, a complex but still entirely ordered mathematical sequencing, especially if large enough, may be indistinguishable from pure randomness. I doubt, however, whether some form of pattern recognition (imagination?) can ever be made to "go away"...</div> <p /> <div><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/masters/albums/grids.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Block Grids</a></div> <span>&nbsp;</span></div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/AorkKbkRweU" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/block-grids-grids-patterns-and-arbitrariness Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:37:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/-qxxV01noxA/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids <p> <div><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/8RWW4iZ3TnNhZTUSLfbNtCu5IPrWPM9AhrC8Nw21Ht1m5JwhfLp70Ta0Oawt/DSC_4502_2.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_4502_2" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/VyURgyvL4zDltEQoBsa74XuOKW5GFpkGdLA641jDy0rP4MritORkW6mPKIzd/DSC_4502_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <img alt="Blocks_grid" height="800" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/zQTP9DzoXJkHWeRt0V8Pj0ep2p2NxZfbHad8uZcnu8uq1fntXgVypBw0Uahn/Blocks_Grid.jpg" width="500" /> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/RckWVee6Rh7Y14Uskpk6MAxEbjYs9uqANqP8pLXOVxMCj7RZvPHjZabXInWk/Blocks_Grid_03.jpg"><img alt="Blocks_grid_03" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Jwsip4tTlAgmL2NZ1FoLku8NFpidGw70M7SMcGr1pY7NdsK220VEtYDR8p0D/Blocks_Grid_03.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> <blockquote> <div>&ldquo;It is important that one sees the instability of what one is looking at; that it could be changed. I like that you are aware of other possibilities whether you wish to set them in motion or not&rdquo;&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div>&ldquo;I usually begin with some sort of an idea of what I want to do. Sometimes it&rsquo;s an image. I always want to see what it will make. Then I actually start working. During the process I don&rsquo;t have any morality about changing my mind. In fact, I often find that having an idea in my head prevents me from doing something else. It can blind me. Working is therefore a way of getting rid of an idea.&rdquo;</div> <p /> <div><strong>Jasper Johns</strong></div> </blockquote> <div>As all artists, and particularly photographers, know the temptation to revisit and revise earlier work can be irresistible. Most often this "revision" (re-vision?) may amount to no more than tinkering at the edges; a change in tonal balance here, a looser or tighter cropping there. In the case of my two series, <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/blocks/albums/blocks_01.html" target="_new">Block Constructions</a> and <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/blocks/albums/blocks_02.html" target="_new">Block Matrices</a>, I felt that there was a distinct alternative method of presentation that amounted to a change in emphasis of what these images were essentially about. In the originals I felt that the sharp textural detail of the surface of the tin blocks detracted from the "formality" of their arrangement within the frame; content over form if you like. By blurring this detail in my revised versions I feel the balance has been tipped more in the direction of the formal properties of the shapes depicted. They also seem somehow less "photographic", which suited the further plans I had for the close up series (the "Matrices"). Here, of course, one has a prime example of the possibilities presented by the use of digital tools. In that case it seemed entirely appropriate to call such revisions "Digitally Remastered"...</div> <p /> <div>Rosalind Krauss once said "The pictorial structure of the grid is fundamentally an emblem of modernity.", by which she meant that it can be viewed as a pictorial form specific to the twentieth century. It is virtually a paradigm of Modernist art as the grid cannot be detected in nineteenth century Western art. Indeed there is something distinctly "mechanistic" about grid patterns wholly suited to a perceived "Modern Age" and has since pervaded all art and design, especially the latter. It is precisely the formal nature of all grid patterns that has always attracted me.</div> <p /> <div>Once "remastered" the Matrices images were ideally suited for my exploration of grid patterns. The idea for this series was initially prompted by my interest in the <a href="http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/paintings/abstracts/category.php?catID=12" target="_new">Colour Chart</a> works by Gerhard Richter, with which the artist explored concepts of randomness, mathematical sequencing and perception. This interest prompted me to research these concepts in relation to the Information Aesthetic theories of Max Bense, Gestalt theory, semiotics and perception, and Computational Aesthetics (which I intend to expand on in more depth in my next post...) Of course, instead of using simple colour charts, I decided to use images which added a further layering of complexity and opened up avenues for exploring perceptual patterning within my mostly random grids. Richter, however, often employed a larger "pool" of distinct elements and the mathematical arrangements were far more complex. I left such complexities for another time. Maybe...</div> <p /> <div><span><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/masters/" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Digitally Remastered</a>&nbsp; </span> <span>&nbsp;</span></div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/-qxxV01noxA" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/digitally-remastered-blocks-and-grids Mon, 23 May 2011 04:01:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/Uo-L4FmoM-A/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/2gmUYLA1wV1ElrT7LFfHgQkaqZuXjQ1Ln9Obz5yntKwbgHBb1CfUrBSxqtum/DSC_5809.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5809" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/lPK8FP6G2Bb6zIzmN8Zg3fsCjQmwfK0N12CojYDLtttZ8JnBRiywUDGnwHOd/DSC_5809.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/vay6gpyi2RnJSxtdUuvPfdFXMX48YI2HhjLTkS3EI49diVQX0t38543iC0wb/DSC_5824.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5824" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/xWDBHzPlo3rgGsBioAIxGarINLfJGTaFT2V8IK8eTSNNtbDAHMl6yJLLJvKk/DSC_5824.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/g2qY88FoCekNvuUFnfywDyVuAfwv23RNm69Bv4W8R9265PrNsTQ7TIveH7VK/DSC_5830.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5830" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/EDKUEFl5hgvlpWyKwLOYyQ9gKEhrpq692muTvVVpGu5WEiIxaigU2tI9q4us/DSC_5830.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Zi4Z0c6D1uwUWbBtzmcdKVqvohe01tvgMcFF67NHTZgHzhxpjr44GNe5XuJ5/DSC_5841.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5841" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/w6OZiOLJKzFu3vU63Ej8dSiWM0WvyBXgj2iiADgHLDs7pcoOasvNXERnN3zC/DSC_5841.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"...according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome - men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at" <strong>John Berger, <em>Ways of Seeing</em></strong></div> </blockquote> <div style=""> <div style=""><strong>Categorizing facial expressions</strong></div> <p /> <div style="">Marjorie Ferguson (1980) identified four types of facial expression in the cover photos of British women&rsquo;s magazines:</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Chocolate Box</em>: half or full-smile, lips together or slightly parted, teeth barely visible, full or three-quarter face to camera. Projected mood: blandly pleasing, warm bath warmth, where uniformity of features in their smooth perfection is devoid of uniqueness or of individuality.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Invitational</em>: emphasis on the eyes, mouth shut or with only a hint of a smile, head to one side or looking back to camera. Projected mood: suggestive of mischief or mystery, the hint of contact potential rather than sexual promise, the cover equivalent of advertising&rsquo;s soft sell.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Super-smiler</em>: full face, wide open toothy smile, head thrust forward or chin thrown back, hair often wind-blown. Projected mood: aggressive, &lsquo;look-at-me&rsquo; demanding, the hard sell, &lsquo;big come-on&rsquo; approach.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Romantic or Sexual</em>: a fourth and more general classification devised to include male and female &lsquo;two-somes&rsquo;; or the dreamy, heavy-lidded, unsmiling big-heads, or the overtly sensual or sexual. Projected moods: possible &lsquo;available&rsquo; and definitely &lsquo;available&rsquo;.</div> <p /> <div style="">In a study of advertisements in women&rsquo;s magazines, Trevor Millum offers these categories of female expressions:</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Soft/introverted</em>: eyes often shut or half-closed, the mouth slightly open/pouting, rarely smiling; an inward-looking trance-like reverie, removed from earthly things.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Cool/level</em>: indifferent, self-sufficient, arrogant, slightly insolent, haughty, aloof, confident, reserved; wide eyes, full lips straight or slightly parted, and obtrusive hair, often blonde. The eyes usually look the reader in the eye, as perhaps the woman regards herself in the mirror.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Seductive</em>: similar to the cool/level look in many respects - the eyes are less wide, perhaps shaded, the expression is less reserved but still self-sufficient and confident; milder versions may include a slight smile.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Narcissistic</em>: similarities to the cool/level and soft/introverted looks, rather closer to the latter: a satisfied smile, closed or half-closed eyes, self-enclosed, oblivious, content - &lsquo;activity directed inward&rsquo;.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Carefree</em>: nymphlike, active, healthy, gay, vibrant, outdoor girl; long unrestrained outward-flowing hair, more outward-going than the above, often smiling or grinning.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Kittenlike</em>: coy, na&iuml;ve (perhaps in a deliberate, studied way), a friendlier and more girlish version of the cool/level look, sometimes almost twee.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Maternal</em>: motherly, matronly, mature, wise, experienced and kind, carrying a sort of authority; shorter hair, slight smile and gentle eyes - mouth may sometimes be stern, but eyes twinkle.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Practical</em>: concentrating, engaged on the business in hand, mouth closed, eyes object-directed, sometimes a slight frown; hair often short or tied back.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Comic</em>: deliberately ridiculous, exaggerated, acting the fool, pulling faces for the benefit of a real or imaginary audience, sometimes close to a sort of archness.</div> <p /> <div style=""><em>Catalogue</em>: a neutral look as of a dummy, artificial, waxlike; features may be in any position, but most likely to be with eyes open wide and a smile, but the look remains vacant and empty; personality has been removed.</div> <p /> <p /> <div style=""><strong>Extracted from <a href="http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html" target="_new">"Notes on 'The Gaze'"</a> by Daniel Chandler</strong></div> <p /> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/sweets1.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 15 American Sweethearts</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/sweets2.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 15 Hollywood Sweethearts</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/Uo-L4FmoM-A" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-whos-got-the-look Tue, 17 May 2011 04:11:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/Yfw06LFTk3Q/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-05-17/lraBoftqBFDdqnshApoJHzjcHJAqmjcgoIlzdheJcrjcBkzqwpeofrunuBmD/DSC_5820.jpg.scaled1000.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5820" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-05-17/lraBoftqBFDdqnshApoJHzjcHJAqmjcgoIlzdheJcrjcBkzqwpeofrunuBmD/DSC_5820.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/18xnmdsxdCANlAjIDHz4pqWsFQhIN05LdEpfXL0fcb55zvB0RUgSJiz2Sjy0/DSC_5838.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5838" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/xYnTQNNmQQblMiCQtHIvoGNHh8EyuXJ4GZROXUUqMApAdYPI6fHGVYDxnvRD/DSC_5838.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed."</div> <div style="">"Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire."</div> <div style=""><strong>Susan Sontag, <em>On Photography</em></strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">In my next post I intend to discuss the intent behind my two new series of images, "15 American Sweethearts" and "15 Hollywood Sweethearts" but for now I want to use these images as examples to talk about an issue that exercises the minds of artists everywhere (not to mention the legal profession too): "appropriation", plagiarism, even "theft" if you like. Now, straight away, I should say, though naturally I'm no lawyer (and nothing in this article can be taken as a discussion of any strictly legal nuance concerning the subject matter here), I don't consider the way I "acquired" the images in these series to be in the legal sense (or strictly "Art" sense) to be "appropriation", let alone plagiarism or theft. There simply was no other way to acquire the images I wanted and, too, they are sufficiently altered from the originals to bear little resemblance. Nevertheless I did photograph the work of other artists/photographers in order to create these images...</div> <br /> <div style="">First of all, lets look at exactly what I have done here: I have photographed printed images from two books which I own. Now I suppose it could be argued that I don't "own" the images in these books and, in the strictly legal sense, I guess that is true. But what exactly IS an image? In one sense here the image constitutes ink arranged in a certain way on paper and a book is not software, I didn't purchase a licence to "use" the book as with software, I thought I physically purchased the book. In other words I own it... Of course, I'm not so naive to believe it is quite as simple as that. For instance I could not reproduce some of the words in the book and claim them as my own. That would be plagiarism. To reproduce ALL of the words and do so would be theft. To do so, even crediting the original author would most likely be copyright infringement. To quote extracts, properly credited, would, I assume, be acceptable. But all of this begs the question: "What about the IDEAS behind the words?" we are already quickly straying into grey areas as you can see. Still, I digress here, it is images (and specifically photographic images) we are discussing here.</div> <br /> <div style="">I am strictly speaking, I guess, a still life photographer. I photograph objects, "things" in the world. Books are undoubtedly "things in the world". In one sense I have photographed here "something existing in the world". Of course books are, too, far more than the sum total of the paper, ink etc. that they are "made" of, their "thingness" if you like. They represent ideas among other things. But how does one photograph an "idea"? As a side note, I have been pondering just that question for some considerable time... Am I not, therefore, entitled to photograph an object I own, bought and paid for? An object that just happens to consist of surfaces with printed matter on? Perhaps I am being deliberately disingenuous here a little; but am I not therefore entitled to photograph the mugs for my last series, "20 Mug Shots", because they happen to have printed images on their surface? And, too, on the issue of "intellectual property", is not any (designed) object the "intellectual property" of its designer? Am I to photograph nothing that has been designed and manufactured therefore? These are not, as you can see, straightforward issues, though they may be, for all I know, more straightforward legally than I imagine. But since when have legal issues necessarily had a firm connection to logic?</div> <br /> <div style="">As I have said, with these images I have (for purely artistic reasons, mainly continuity and coherence) so cropped, manipulated etc. the originals as to be fairly unrecognisable from their source (I mean "unrecognisable" in the detail and intent, of course. A determined viewer may well be able to locate the sources). My purpose here was in no way to make a "statement" about appropriation. I merely use them here as "examples" to raise other issues. But these are issues that go to the heart of what "art" is, what is "allowed" and what is not. Picasso once said "If there is anything to steal, I steal", which presumably was a statement linked to a certain concept of "artistic freedom". It is a concept I hear all the time espoused by artists. Put simply, most artists would agree that the essence of art is that no subject matter, no statement be "off limits". That is, of course, until somebody "appropriates" their work. Then they squeal like stuck pigs. Then it's "Call in the lawyers..." But once you allow lawyers and judges to stick their snouts into such complex issues you have embarked already on a dangerously slippery slope. One where you and everybody else (everybody that is except the lawyers) can only be the losers. Of course, I'm not advocating a "thief's charter" here; a free for all. Sufficient protection already exists, or so it seems to me. It is legal attempts to artificially "extend" this "protection" that bothers me.</div> <br /> <div style="">Which brings me to the situation with images etc. placed online for the world to see. Most artists wish their work to be as widely seen as possible. Which means they actively seek to display their work online as often as they can. There has been much unease about the easy opportunities for the appropriation or "theft" of their work. For me this seems to be a "have one's cake and eat it" situation. As a photographer (OK a "Fine Art Photographer", whatever that means...) I place on display online most if not all of my work. Actually when I said "whatever that means" it may seem I'm not sure what it means, but in one respect I am absolutely sure: it means that I sell my work in the form of "Fine Art" prints. Online, at the resolutions I post at, it would be impossible to "steal" my images and make what would amount to "fake" Fine Art prints. Even were I to post images at a sufficiently high resolution the result of such a theft would not be the same as prints I make myself or cause to be made. Neither would such prints carry my signature, my "autograph" if you like, which is the REAL currency of the Art World. In truth I'm fairly relaxed about the whole thing. If, say, somebody was to "appropriate" an image of mine and use it elsewhere (AND I were to find out; life being too short to cruise around online actively seeking out such "infringements") I may request the courtesy of a credit and, of course, a link back to my site would be nice too... but I wouldn't be calling in the lawyers. Lining their pockets is not something that particularly appeals to me. But I'm a photographer. What about artists in other mediums? Painters for instance. What do painters think they are posting online? Their paintings? Surely not... unless they are digital artists of course and their work does indeed consist of pixels. Of course a cynic might say too that for the overwhelming majority of "artists" showing their work online worrying about their work being appropriated or stolen amounts to borderline certifiable paranoia...</div> <br /> <div style="">Still, it has been observed (indeed I have "observed" it myself...) that there is a principle involved here. And there is no doubt that the "appropriation" of artist/photographer's work without recompense by large organisations for their own gain is morally reprehensible. Much of what large organisations do in general is morally reprehensible... But a blogger using an image on their blog without the courtesy of seeking permission first is hardly on that level. As for another artist appropriating one's work (or part of it) to use in a piece of their own: it may be irritating but it has its place firmly entrenched in the history of art. Even its own legitimacy. It could even be an "homage"... That all this is just so much easier now is a simple fact of life of being online. And too the issues involved are many and complex. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface here. Apart from the superficial examples I speak of here there are deep philosophical issues to be considered too. Issues that in many ways go to the heart of just what constitutes art at all. And those are murky waters indeed that, at least for now, I have mostly steered well clear of. In truth I am still formulating my own opinions on these issues myself. But I have gleaned at least one thing from all my musings on this subject and here, for better or for worse, is my best piece of advice: We are where we are... Deal with it.</div> <br /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/sweets1.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 15 American Sweethearts</a></div> <br /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/sweets2.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 15 Hollywood Sweethearts</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/Yfw06LFTk3Q" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/sweethearts-inappropriate-behaviour Sun, 15 May 2011 03:55:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/ic93h_XXkLg/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/ul7eOBaMXk4FNVbAIfUxZYWbDs9n4sZ4qBXZZGPb3VQ89ynII7gOW6SzGI4K/DSC_5698.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5698" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Dg21WJBocDKkH8dmnr4ZxtT8u8yy8tYRWC5AanpGOY4N4ZQ5Tniq3T0ilwbB/DSC_5698.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/KUPqbFiLqHXaJJDbBU42C0aOgpInqLcdl3SHhthBjRMKGVIg8xCxs84YdiHn/DSC_5719.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5719" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/osjo3PcNqLkQNqvhJwOPxxCfdaCkjMXPHlwiLrYBCB6ffYBx21vytF0WJmx0/DSC_5719.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/kvOtaOhVm1t9PzaI05rCNOOtmwSWvE2rje2T69BlnsG2kCpFZswC1RB1Q2jj/DSC_5722.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5722" height="500" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/HmAxAD1A3gae8k6Lem1Dis2xDIZuQ8dtYs0TKx9Vo7VpnYbarfKBHqSQDPX5/DSC_5722.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"Art does not reproduce what is visible; it makes things visible." <strong>Paul Klee</strong></div> <p /> <div style="">"Art is art. Everything else is everything else." <strong>Ad Reinhardt</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">This series of images of drinking mugs was originally based on a whim; a logical (or so it seemed to me) outgrowth of, or subtext to, my previous series "50 Precious Things". This whim (and the title of the series) was inspired by Thomas Ruff's series of portraits (<a href="http://aprocuradeoz.blogspot.com/2010/01/does-portrait-without-identity-still.html" target="_new">Portr&auml;ts</a>) which have often been described as mere "mug shots". Added to this was the fact that I discovered that we possessed precisely 20 such "decorative" mugs, which seemed a nice round number. It also meant that, unlike the "Precious Things" series, I could make what amounts to a complete inventory, a satisfyingly complete series with no need to make any selections or value judgements. This is merely a record of all the mugs we own. It also appealed to me that were we to add to their number there would be no need to add to the series, to "update" it as it were; just like a photograph itself the series would remain a "snapshot" referencing a particular situation at a particular point in time.</div> <p /> <div style="">In any case these are images OF mugs but not images ABOUT mugs; for that to be the case would be to make fetishes of them. The mugs depicted here are only ostensibly the subject of the series (formally, however, although the sample here of 20 mugs is small, it is sufficient to constitute a sort of "typology" of drinking mugs due to the remarkable "persistence of form" of all such utilitarian domestic objects - such as, too, plates, spoons etc. - which are, and have been historically, made to a "blueprint", all design variations being mere extemporisation on a basic theme. This concept is covered in much detail in Norman Bryson's series of essays on the history of still life, <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo3536227.html" target="_new">"Looking At The Overlooked"</a>. But that's another discussion for another time, perhaps...); the real subject here is, once again, the nature of photographic representation.</div> <p /> <div style="">As with my "Precious Things" series, I again chose to employ the same simple, even bland technique. Once again, too, these images are intended to be seen as large, oversized prints; the mugs would thus be represented at four to five times life size. This in itself proposes to the viewer, just as in Ruff's large portraits, a kind of "forced intimacy" or more prosaically an opportunity to study in great detail the surface properties of these objects which would normally remain invisible to the viewer: the various cracks in their surfaces, the course screen used in the process of printing text and images onto them, for example. With Ruff's portraits, of course, there is the added "frisson" of being able to study facial details etc. from a greater proximity than one would ever dream of employing in real life (with the possible exception of a loved one). Subjectively, too, this would also appear to represent a source of greater interest to most viewers; after all more people are fascinated by their fellow humans than they are by unprepossessing everyday items like drinking mugs. But that would be to miss the point here: the opportunity to study something, anything, at length and at a greatly enlarged scale in a photograph is an experience of a different order to that provided by the closest of studies of the object itself. To gaze on an image is to gaze on a reality of different order. And, too, while anybody might think it odd behaviour to take a set of mugs, as depicted in this series here, and study them at length, possibly with the aid of a magnifying glass even, as has been observed: "... staring for a long time at a picture isn't eccentric, it's highly cultured behaviour". Art historian Anton Ehrenzweig likened the experience to one of "utter watchfulness", indeed as apt a description as I could personally conceive of. And, far from requiring the intrusions of any "artistic style", all that is actually required is to leave the camera to do what it is best at - plucking a thing out of time to be stared at, theoretically, for ever. The "art" here resides, not in the "genius" of the photographer/artist but in the genius of the thing coupled with the genius of photography itself. All I did was fetch the mugs from the kitchen cupboard...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/mugs.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 20 Mug Shots</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/ic93h_XXkLg" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/20-mug-shots-the-larger-view Fri, 13 May 2011 04:33:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/uWEYoRrg3ik/50-precious-things-evaluation http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-evaluation <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/a7Ti6Rdjt4rTXKsDTsQ85NG3dGpSJyhHlwo1Fe4yVyHchvGtH0SERB0OeObt/DSC_5639.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5639" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/LlF3RB3KEVP6HjCJ2UdY3rQtjFBh8I3ao6ZJ3NqMqqz9a1s6KTwmK6o8H4DF/DSC_5639.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/NAYILA7dYNvTq1QkXjHOzNHmN7qlsMPOU77uqQsFU5J9FRHksnCG47iKonk8/DSC_5682.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5682" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/VLoRWmYsKJnci3bVnWZGAAAMDYgoWUeBqqM87781zGyhkqghnjLq1JJRi321/DSC_5682.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/W66BzvDrQZBNIGLm1fG1VHPMGbAl3SZEXeORcOaJphCeQhgSP25Ol41ahexR/DSC_5730.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5730" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/amEzhsXyANqEQsRMPRHkUQvQDWVqjfYLfRQUt4nPGGjX7hCPCWEWMyofEK6y/DSC_5730.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-evaluation">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"To photograph is to confer importance. There is no way to suppress the tendency inherent in all photographs to accord value to their subjects."</div> <p /> <div style="">"Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks."</div> <p /> <div style="">"Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: 'There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit - what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.' Photographs, which cannot explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy."</div> <p /> <div style=""><strong>Susan Sontag, <em>On Photography</em></strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">As Sontag alludes to above, the very act of selecting an object and photographing always confers some sense of importance, or "value", onto the chosen subject/object. Albeit that importance or value may, in itself, be highly personal and non-obvious and therefore largely incommunicable in a photograph. Once again, as Sontag says, photographs essentially explain nothing. In that case it is probably best left to the viewer to speculate, even fantasise, about the possible reasons for, the criteria applied to, any selection of the subject. Deduction too, of course, can be applied from various hints etc. in the consistency, or otherwise, of choices made and/or the way the artist/photographer has chosen to depict, represent, the objects.</div> <p /> <div style="">In the case of this series I made the decision early on to present these objects in as honest, simple, even bland way as I could. Thus by a consistency in the photographic treatment employed no hint would be given as to the relative value I may attach to them individually. It would therefore appear that each item is equivalent in my sight. This may, or may not be actually the case. I too have always been drawn to, shall we say, a more detached viewpoint or as Ruscha once put it, "Actually what I was after was no-style or a non-statement with a no-style." Just how possible such a notion is possible in practice remains open to question. However, here at least, I have tried to approach such a method as closely as I could. It has seemed to me too, especially lately, that, perversely, the less I do as a photographer, the less I "interfere" in the process, the less hard I try, the more the images themselves are allowed to reveal the true nature of the medium. And therein lies the real magic of photography and it may seem, counter-intuitively, to reveal its true nature as art, or even, dare I say it, "Art".</div> <p /> <div style="">Still, there are ways in which one, as an artist/photographer of some at least notional competence, can provide clues or pointers for the viewer. This constitutes the "look at this" aspect of photography; the "show" of "show and tell". To that end I have, with these images, virtually abolished any clues as to the relative scale of each object; the more succinctly to indicate that there is to be no "favouring" of one above the other, no hint or indication of relative "worth", however one may choose to define "worth" or "value". To complete this notion of equivalence and negation of scale it is intended, too, that these images be presented in the form of oversized prints (that is 3 feet by 4 feet). In fact, of course, many, if not most, of these images will never actually be printed to that size; nevertheless, conceptually, the intention remains and the point is made.</div> <p /> <div style="">The sheer scale of the prints will, too, force a closer study of the details of the objects depicted than might otherwise be made. I have said many times that "surface" is virtually all there is to a photographic image and so it may be. But I am also intrigued here by the fact of the "transposing", the "transformation" of the surface qualities of these objects, the textural, tactile qualities I mean, onto the unarguably flat surface of the image or print. It is in fact just these qualities along with "details" like patina (evidence of use, handling, the "life", if you like, of these objects), the irregularities in both form and surface which indicate that many, if not most, of them are hand made, that could be said to have constituted their greatest attraction for me. It is possibly the one aspect that they all have in common in spite of the seeming disparate nature of the selections I have made. It is, too, the best clue to the exact nature of my criteria for choosing them. I may have certain attachments to these objects, emotionally I mean, associations may be inferred but as a visual artist, for me, the "look", the image, will always be paramount...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/precious.html">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 50 Precious Things</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-evaluation">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-evaluation#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/uWEYoRrg3ik" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-evaluation Wed, 11 May 2011 04:08:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/ItMYaao_4ks/50-precious-things-definitions http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-definitions <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/crVCDiHkLMWdqdIBJ7J3dtSxIk2PIH5AA01o0eeUDBb4W3eis0gihDsbl8nG/DSC_5687.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5687" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/1E4OTJ4xUvqo6VTjelCO8WyBjKXawePP5uAd2y8VR7xIij8VkGgIZTFOosAv/DSC_5687.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/fDR6pG3bvC0ltjXtaw16NyiyD9jT96eJRu9Kf3Y3ivrrofUHTy2ODHbDDeNC/DSC_5729.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5729" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/MttoDUUJBnsl0mdGa1Wlh8EFMUl8ucbam0i1kPVNkHTJjEY40G75UUUDkTYa/DSC_5729.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/rxmG9L139rpMWJIcClo43vMRcdi1tXoLijAJmGETdUDsYdCDnkTOWJw9SK0o/DSC_5740.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5740" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/IMHWiqEM5nmNYiVNRHgl2SfSLRBQZW7XPiU2TdYlBRtclpOfn0joHoSXwXlc/DSC_5740.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-definitions">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"We find it familiar to consider objects as useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences. We are on less familiar ground when we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought. The notion of evocative objects bring together these two less familiar ideas, underscoring the inseparability of thought and feeling in our relationship to things. We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with." <strong>Sherry Turkle, <em>Evocative Objects</em></strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">Let me say right off that the objects in this series are ones I have selected to photograph from all the (many) "contenders" in my home. It is my wife Desir&eacute;e, however, who found, chose and purchased every single one of them in the first place. We call them her "precious things"; it's a sort of running joke between us. But like all such running jokes there is more than a modicum of truth to it. She does indeed love and cherish every one of them and for that, if for no other reason, I too feel an attachment to each and every one of them. However, there are other reasons; and, too, my reasons may differ, especially in the detail, from those of my wife. Different associations, connotations, as I say. And I guess that is the point about "evocative objects". But first the dictionary definition of "precious"...</div> <p /> <blockquote> <div style=""><strong>precious</strong> &nbsp;(ˈprɛʃəs)&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div style="">&mdash; adj</div> <div style="">1.<span style=""> </span>beloved; dear; cherished</div> <div style="">2.<span style=""> </span>very costly or valuable</div> <div style="">3.<span style=""> </span>held in high esteem, esp in moral or spiritual matters</div> <div style="">4.<span style=""> </span>very fastidious or affected, as in speech, manners, etc</div> <div style="">5.<span style=""> </span>informal &nbsp;worthless: you and your precious ideas!</div> <p /> <div style="">&mdash; adv</div> <div style="">6.<span style=""> </span>informal &nbsp;(intensifier): there's precious little left</div> <p /> <div style="">[C13: from Old French precios, &nbsp;from Latin pretiōsus &nbsp;valuable, from pretium &nbsp;price, value]</div> <p /> <div style="">'preciously</div> <p /> <div style="">&mdash; adv</div> <p /> <div style="">'preciousness</div> <p /> <div style="">&mdash; n</div> <p /> <div style=""><strong>Collins English Dictionary - Complete &amp; Unabridged 10th Edition&nbsp;</strong></div> <div style=""><strong>2009 &copy; William Collins Sons &amp; Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 &copy; HarperCollins&nbsp;</strong></div> <div style=""><strong>Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">If I were asked which of these definitions would apply to the objects I have selected I would have to answer all (or nearly all) of the above. Had I chosen to photograph, say, just one of these objects that would have implied a uniqueness, an unambiguous depth of feeling and attachment to the object selected. In fact, I was almost going to stop at around 15 images in the series. This would have represented a series of fairly carefully selected objects. In fact it was due to my wife's comment of "Why stop there?" and some urging from Anna Lee Keefer that I carried on further. Eventually I called a halt at 50 as it turned out. It seemed as good a place as any to stop, being a nice round number. But there were other reasons: In reaching that number I had obviously somewhat "loosened" my criteria and thus lowered the bar considerably for selection. This too had the effect of making my reasons for selection more ambiguous and leaving, in some cases, room for irony. Nevertheless I could have continued, in which case the series would have begun to resemble an inventory with all of its implications of completeness and "non-selection" and "non-attachment". A mere record or documentation and therefore not representing any thoughts or feelings on my part (although, it could be said that still it would represent my wife's choices, associations etc.). In the end I trod a fine line in making my choices.</div> <p /> <div style="">Of course it is all well and good to speak of personal associations etc. as the criteria for choosing the objects I did. Why this object and not that? And here, I see little point in explaining, one by one, my reasons for my selections. By that I mean that the act of making these images itself could be said to constitute a sort of "show and tell". Well, "show", yes, but "tell" what? The point is that I would have to verbally explain my choices here; merely viewing the images would offer no help in interpreting exactly why I made those choices. Such explanations belong more properly to Gombrich's "beholder's share" and I leave them to the viewer to speculate on and interpret if and where they may. As with all images there are things about which any visual representation must remain essentially mute. But not all things, however, and this goes now directly to some of the decisions I made in association with the "treatment" of these images. These relate to some of the criteria used that can be shown too and it is those criteria that I feel most comfortable talking about. This will be the subject of my next post...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/precious.html">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 50 Precious Things</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-definitions">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-definitions#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/ItMYaao_4ks" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-definitions Mon, 09 May 2011 03:49:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/U_gaFEL_UP8/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/nXap1UeeMGsCUpfj0TTtyNzVymbkW4eeot46OaBBKA4OVt1DmtXdCOimz2uh/DSC_5640_-_Version_2.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5640_-_version_2" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/6tJ6DP1gBu9UKneDEZ60U7sTUJlpLp9b7fV8by11clrlkB3XVo6kiE9HLWeP/DSC_5640_-_Version_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/L6FlDY313H2tX8APY597SxPn8dEvasWOCzjjerGUrR59NHLx5CxmXl3nzlQ2/DSC_5660.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5660" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/JbD5JJIHovON7hLNlIq7wr73Ep0RoJE6N6ZlNnsLVrbl0Mo0REB7Ee6DxoXk/DSC_5660.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/KMCSGcdMJedTebz0fpFKCcLdJoiLNbUgwabvY8p8Aag2hM5AkgWvWiGsmdgr/DSC_5673.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5673" height="667" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/woXBCHgdpxIa8XVD3O8volePVSgNMDDusVrHRAsQPgag5pZZXoT4rVltKGn2/DSC_5673.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"If things are the way they are, why should I try to make them look different?" <strong>Thomas Ruff</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">When asked about his working practices, photographer Thomas Ruff described them as "letting the machine do the work it would do anyway" and went on to describe "art photography" as "perhaps the most stupid use of the medium". Did that mean Ruff didn't consider what he did "art"? Surely not? And I, for one, most definitely think not. I think that what Ruff was alluding to when he spoke about "art" photography was the kind of photography one sees all the time "masquerading" as art: Images with liberal use of blur, "effects" etc. Images where the "photographer" is trying so hard to make art. Trying too hard. Add an obscure and "arty" sounding title and you're there, so to speak.</div> <p /> <div style="">When she wrote "On Photography" back in the 1970s, Susan Sontag commented that contrary to the efforts of many photographers in the past there was no need to "interfere with the supposedly superficial realism" of the photograph in order to make it "surreal". Surrealism is inherent in the very nature of the photographic enterprise. In fact, she observed, photography is the only art form that is natively surrealist by nature. I am sure she was right. In fact the harder one tries to make so called "surrealist" images the more narrowly one would convey photography's surreal properties. I would go further, however: I am (and I doubt I'm alone here) convinced that speculation as to what constitutes "art" in photography is futile and superfluous too. "Art" is inherent in the very act of photographing something, inherent in the very nature of photography. This only leaves the question as to whether the resulting image is good or bad art. It was ever thus with any medium, of course. However, so embedded in the nature of the medium is it that more or less painful and self conscious attempts to "make art" lead only to a dilution of these properties of photography. Trying to inject some notion of mystery and obscurity by the use of "tricks" such as excessive blurring of the image or piling on "arty" effects actually results in a kind of trite de-mystifying of the medium.</div> <p /> <div style="">Such thoughts have been much on my mind as I have contemplated a major change in my own working practices: the use of colour in my work that is. And here I chose not to think of myself as "going over" to colour but using it as an addition to my existing practices. Nevertheless it occurred to me very early on that colour photography, at least for me, was sufficiently different by nature to cause me to reconsider my approach. Subjectively I would cling on to my accustomed practice of photographing objects in my home. This had the double advantage of familiarity and, because early on I made the decision to photograph them on a plain white background, frontally lit and simply framed, I would not really have to "deal" with colour; I would simply, honestly and as accurately as I could, reproduce the existing tonal and colour properties of my chosen subjects. Of course this does not make the resulting images any more "real" than my previous monochrome work, as anybody who has read my earlier posts will know. It may, in fact make them less "real" and more "surreal". But that is an issue that I shall address at greater length in future posts. I also intend to discuss the personal associations and connections I attach to this series. Which, as it turned out, is what these images are really about...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/colour/albums/precious.html">Objectively Speaking :: Colour Work :: 50 Precious Things</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/U_gaFEL_UP8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/50-precious-things-thats-the-way-it-is Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:57:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/3l96XbPs5vk/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/jFCQcHTzVeQGVoytJzYKqZfybi1OSY2lfkO57snPEDk1OFgUYdgNxaIZGsGH/connect_2.jpg"><img alt="Connect_2" height="696" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/PQFhWQAq68UBVlTtCz6AGs1VBptzMB2unSpDRdMDSYpOovxxMYLFentYv2qz/connect_2.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/wRGuZGZzZ9MdMN6v4PgwFyquKhhroSiQzSyy42Czgmf4Ye8zSj3pqIWywT1z/connect_1.jpg"><img alt="Connect_1" height="696" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/YJUwe55QxFFj8Xl8O73O5rWzlH4NhAbkJuKFUgHmSSxekuIgtwbLhISXXPLx/connect_1.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">&ldquo;The reality in front of the camera is reality of the first degree, the representation of the reality in front of the camera is reality of the second degree, and then come any number of possible gradations and distortions.&rdquo; <strong>Thomas Ruff</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">First there was <a href="http://contrarytoappearance.posterous.com/" target="_new">contrary to appearances</a>... a collaboration between myself and my friend and fellow photographer <a href="http://annaleekeefer.posterous.com/" target="_new">Anna Lee Keefer</a>. Anna has written about how the project came about <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/alk/albums/albums/notes.html" target="_blank">here</a>. This is what I wrote as an introduction on our joint <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/alk/albums/contrary.html" target="_new">website</a>:</div> <blockquote> <div style="">"At the end of 2010, Anna Lee Keefer and Ian Talbot decided to start a conversation with photographic images.</div> <br /> <div style="">Each day they would make and post images to a photo blog.</div> <br /> <div style="">Some days they would post a single image each, other days multiple images.</div> <br /> <div style="">After making precisely 250 posts each they decided to call a halt.</div> <br /> <div style="">Now they are in the process of making sense of it all..."</div> </blockquote> <div style="">This naturally raises the question of just exactly what does "making sense of it all" mean?</div> <br /> <div style="">First of all, for me at least, it doesn't necessarily indicate that each image is actually intended to "mean" anything. Due to the nature of the project there would be little or no pre-planning; I for one restricted myself almost exclusively to subject matter that just happened to be in and around the environment of my home. However, that doesn't mean that I just mindlessly photographed anything that happened to catch my eye and that I simply thought would make a "nice" image. I just don't (cannot?) work that way. Most of the decisions of what I would photograph and how were made before I would actually pick up the camera and make the image. So while not exactly planned, each image could be said to have been somewhat "pre-visualised" according to my usual practice.</div> <br /> <div style="">I had thought when we embarked on this project that it would rapidly become more and more difficult to find new images as the days passed. In fact, in some ways, it became easier as I became accustomed to seeking out and selecting the subjects for each day's "quota". What I later realised, when I actually stopped to ponder on why this should be, was that, in effect, I was reaching into my memory store of "possible images"; I was drawing on everything I had seen and done through long years of experience. "Influences" would come to the fore, vague memories of images I had made before as well as those by other photographers, painters, artists from other media etc. Some of these "influences" I was consciously aware of, many I was doubtlessly unaware of. This in essence is how one deals with "pressure" situations where one has to, is committed to, make a certain amount of images in a set time. At the time, however, I made no notes, mental or otherwise of what I may have been thinking of when making these images.</div> <br /> <div style="">Which brings me to <a href="http://contraryrealities.posterous.com/" target="_new">contrary realities</a>, the new project which Anna and myself have embarked upon. We have decided, for this new blog of ours, to occasionally produce "pages", to build a sort of "scrapbook", incorporating various images from the contrary to appearances project plus other images that evoke "associations" and "connections" for us. These images could be photographs, art works etc. from our own work, that of each other or, in fact, any artist or source that seems appropriate. Here I should add, notwithstanding what I have said previously about "influences", that such "associations" are made with the benefit of hindsight and may not necessarily reflect any such connections made at the time of their execution; this is about making sense now of what we have done, in other words.</div> <br /> <div style="">Neither does "making sense" necessarily mean ascribing "meaning", personal meaning that is, or "interpretation" to these images. There is no attempt here to "explain". The viewer remains free to interpret both the original images themselves and the other images we may choose to accompany them. Read these collections of images as you will. This can be seen as much of an "exercise" for the viewer as it is for us. A concept that I believe is important here: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy said back in 1925 "The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen". These days most people own a camera and take photographs just as most people can read and write. However, in order to be able to write it is necessary to be able to read, to be able to interpret and make sense of texts. It is not, conversely, necessarily the case that those who can and do make photographic images (ludicrously easy as it is now) are able or competent to "read" (decode) photographs. In that sense many "photographers" will remain photographic illiterates...</div> <br /> <div style="">Before I embarked on the writing of this article I was "reminded", by Anna of course, that on the <a href="http://contraryrealities.posterous.com/" target="_new">contrary realities</a> site we had written "now it's personal" and warned not to make this a "philosophical treatise" on the nature of photography (as is my wont) nor to include any quotes by "some French guy". I hope what I have written here is "personal" enough for her, but if not I trust this may be: Working with Anna Lee Keefer is one of the great delights of my life. Everyday she pushes, cajoles and inspires me to be better than I am. She is both friend and close collaborator. I quite simply adore her and her work.</div> <br /> <div style="">Note to Anna: As you know, Thomas Ruff is German and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was Hungarian so, you see, no quotes from any French guys...</div> <br /> <div style=""><a href="http://contraryrealities.posterous.com/" target="_new">contrary realities :: a select promptorium</a></div> <br /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/alk/" target="_new">Anna Lee Keefer & Ian Talbot</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/3l96XbPs5vk" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/contrary-realities-a-select-promptorium Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:39:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/gNRuMPuXTuo/metanoid-intersections-slipping-through-the-g http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-slipping-through-the-g <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/qSw3Bn93eathKsXdXURN8J6e74JRViz8dxUb9uuAiPEBf6V3x9fQZ5wi10bc/DSC_5245.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5245" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/phjeBmtq7fnC9o7UmS6pRnyUllzhPHl2DB4Hm118ZXClSQ8EQuX1QgxOWLI1/DSC_5245.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"The act of photography results in photographs such as we nowadays are being flooded with on all sides. Hence a consideration of this act can serve as an introduction to these surfaces whose presence is ubiquitous." <strong>Vil&eacute;m Flusser</strong></div> <p /> <div style="">&ldquo;The spontaneous is the most beautiful thing that can appear in a picture, but nothing in art appears less spontaneously than that.&rdquo; <strong>Jeff Wall</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">In this the last post on the current series of images I have recently discussed here I would like to talk a bit about the series as a whole. Before I do, however, just a further word about certain philosophical texts and concepts that I have quoted from liberally in previous posts. As I have said, the thoughts that I have selected to quote from do not necessarily indicate agreement on my part, they simply are more in the way of reflecting on some of the questions that may be considered in relation to the act of making photographs or, more broadly, art in general. And here again I must emphasise that I am no philosopher or even a vaguely serious student of the discipline. So, in fact, any notion of "agreement" on my part would be pointless and superfluous anyway. Quite simply I do not claim to understand all of this stuff (or, possibly, any of it). I may be attempting to make sense of some of it but that is purely in relation to a general attempt to understand what exactly it is I do when I (or anybody for that matter) do what I do (make images, that is). Which is why I have said I don't use such dimly understood concepts in any specific way to direct what I may do apart from how a certain more complete understanding of what I do may of course influence how I approach problems in the future. In other words they are in no way a "manifesto" for future practice (a fatal error I believe far too many artists have made in the past).</div> <p /> <div style="">Still it is, I suppose, inevitable I should be drawn to such philosophical musings as I am. In many ways philosophy could be termed "thinking about thinking" in much the same way as what I do could also be termed "photography about photography" or "art about art" if you like, a practice which could be thought of as somewhat "circular" or even "incestuous" but I want here to stress that much (maybe even most) of the actual thinking I do about this is with hindsight. Once again not so much pondering what I may do next (though obviously there has to be an element of that) but reflecting on the what and the why of what I have done. Which is why my interpretation of my own work can often quite radically change "after the fact" so to speak. Pre-planning, pre-visualisation is one thing (and, for me, one vital thing) but nothing is that simple and sometimes it is only with hindsight that one may realise too the subconscious elements and associations that will often colour conscious intent. But back to my possible (inevitable?) non or mis-understanding of the philosophical thinking I consult: Much of it is difficult (a great deal of it is, for me at least, virtually impenetrable). This had from time to time bothered me. What if I totally misunderstand the meaning and consequences and go off on some absolutely misguided path, possibly to some existential dead end, the kind that can be creatively paralysing even? Quite simply, I found the answer was glaringly obvious. I just quit worrying about it. In fact it may well be just in such gaps in my understanding that the most fruitful potential lay. And the more I read, the more I realised that, just as in art, there is no right or wrong, there is no general agreement. To all intents and purposes just "being there" on the path was enough. It didn't matter if it was the "right" path or not because there is no "right" path. Complete understanding is an impossibility and so it is in those gaps in my understanding, the interstices opened up by the very act of thinking about the issues involved, that I could search for some of the answers. Come to think of it "just stop worrying" is pretty sound advice for any artist confronted by difficulties in their own work practices. OK now for the specifics...</div> <p /> <div style="">The basic premise of this series, as I originally conceived it, revolved, basically, around the simple and concrete device of two fairly thick pre stretched blank canvases butted up to each other. The main element that drew me to this was nothing more than the pronounced gap ("gaps" again...) formed between the two elements which would serve to "partition" the framed area of my "stage" on which my chosen elements making up the image could "perform" so to speak. I like "basic devices" such as this if for no greater reason than there would thus already exist a coherent base for a series of images, a certain consistency being an element, an anchor, that I like to always be able to "come back to" as it were. This opens up the possibility for repetition (a repetition must be more or less the same as what it repeats but it cannot be identical) of course but also for "repeatability" which is not quite the same thing (repeatability is the variation in measurements taken by a single person or instrument on the same item and under the same conditions. But I use the term loosely here - this is art not science). By establishing a "repeatability" too I thus remove any onus on myself to extend the series beyond what I have done; no need to "imag-ine" (make images of) everything I could possibly imagine (conceive of).&nbsp;</div> <p /> <div style="">On my "stage" I could now select and position my various "elements", objects (but I won't use the term "subject" here as that is, in philosophical thought, most usually taken to mean the viewer or observer, from its obvious linguistic roots). Varying the position of the "gap" within the frame is, I guess, analogous to "scene changing" on my "stage". In selecting the objects which would appear in the images one can assume that such selection implies "meaning", either personal to me but opaque to the viewer or with no clear meaning for me but open to interpretation by a viewer (a notional concept really, anything could be said to be open to interpretation. Back to Gombrich's "beholder's share"). But what exactly does "meaning" mean, so to speak. Often it is used as an alternative term to "significance" but here we need to be careful. In a sense an object can still be "significant" without any clear meaning. Everything in a photographic image is in this sense "significant"; it "signifies". It serves as a "sign" for the "signified", or referent, which is to say the "real world" object that it represents. In most usage, "meaning" would imply (or "signify"...) "importance" but that is a value judgement; a sign or signifier just is. The object may be of little or no importance but the concept of it being nothing more than a signifier for the referent is of paramount importance. And it is exactly this that I wish the "meaning" these images to ultimately indicate. And yet... I cannot get away from the fact that some of the objects I have chosen DO have meaning for me, as I have indicated in previous posts, and possibly will do for the viewer (although most likely not the same meaning). But if only everything were quite that simple...</div> <p /> <div style="">We come to now full circle back to issues of "interpretation". Interpretation by the viewer that is. There is a famous quote by Frank Stella speaking about his work in which he says "What you see is what you see". But is this the case? Ever I mean. Doesn't "what you see" largely depend on, firstly, location (where you see it) and mode of presentation (how you see it)? An image (any image) on a wall, in one's home or a gallery, or in the hand becomes an "object of contemplation", or at least potentially and especially in the case of the latter. And too, if it's a painting you will see the "unique" object, if a photograph, the print. A physical object at any rate. This is of course a situation conducive to contemplation which leads to interpretation. The world changes, however. Most people's actual experience of art is by way of the reproduction. Previous to that, it would ironically have had to be via the "original" (usually in a religious setting where personal "interpretation" was discouraged anyway); many if not most people of course would have had little or no experience of art at all. At one time viewing a reproduction would have inevitably meant via books. Which are also delivery systems conducive to contemplation and interpretation although less so than viewing the unique object. For now the delivery system for art of choice (Hobson's choice in many cases) is the computer screen, via the web. Apart from issues of the homogenisation of all images thus viewed (it could be argued that a painting, for example, is no longer any different from a photograph; they're both more or less arrangements of pixels on a screen). Be that as it may, the true and full experience of viewing a painting is now at the very least much devalued. However, if maybe to a lesser extent, so is that of viewing a photographic image. If at least interpretation is still possible, discrimination is becoming harder and less common. All of this, however, is not to mention the most important issue of all...</div> <p /> <div style="">The world is full of images. People largely now see the world through images. Witness the spectacle at tourist sites or museums etc. (those where photography is allowed of course). Not only do most of the people there see the world "through" images, for many it is the only way they CAN see the world. For them "reality" or the "real world" is an image. In any case it's difficult to really "see" anything with a camera glued to one's face. And that's just those "making" the images. The rest of the world is only too happy to "consume" the results in an endless stream of mindless cyber-trash. Contemplation and thus interpretation of what they see is of course out of the question. Even "looking" in any meaningful sense is out of the question. The common currency of the viewing of images online is the glance. As far as that is true, I don't know what is worse: those viewers who just accept that what they are "seeing" is mere "eye candy" and therefore restrict their reaction to the crass "ooh, ahh and lovely" variety or those morons who still seek nevertheless to publicly "interpret" what they have glanced at in some notionally "deep and meaningful" way. The former are merely anaesthetised, the latter seriously deranged. Whatever the case this is not a good time for subtlety or nuance... the viewer gets the "art" they deserve. And quite happy they seem to be about it too...</div> <p /> <div style="">Finally, just to finish I would like to say a few things about the image shown above. I have already said that the "gap" between the background elements was a major constituent of these images ("gaps" in general being much in my thoughts of late). For this image the "gap" is there on the extreme right but now plugged by a piece of hessian inserted between the two canvases. In truth I had sought to make an image that was almost a "non-photograph", there isn't much to see in other words. However, I have lately, also, while contemplating the nature of photography, and alluding too to my observations on the "homogenisation" of all images, come to think that painting and photography have more in common, as "image making" than I might have previously imagined. Such "minimalist" imaging as I have made here, however, more commonly has been the preserve of painting. I suppose people "expect" more from a photograph is all. "Subjectively" that is. Nevertheless, the image I have made is still a photograph and the referents are two pieces of canvas and a piece of hessian. I would have it "look" a little like a painting (here I mean as a more less minimalist "abstract" image) but it's as hard to escape the referent as ever. However, on the subject of one of the referents, on seeing and selecting the piece of hessian my mind strayed momentarily to the work of the Italian Arte Povera artist Ren&eacute; Burri, an artist whose work I have always had some affection for. This is not to say that this in any way is to contribute to the "meaning" of the image, it was just a passing thought. Nor is there any reason why it should occur to any viewer. So hardly a part of any "interpretation" either. Still... while not part of my interpretation of my own image, looking at the image now "reminds" me of what had passed through my mind at the time. It "reminds" me of the artist and consequently makes me think again about him and his work. Now I have often before resisted the notion of the photograph as a pure "aide memoire" (I still do largely) but still... undeniably there IS that element to an image (any image, but most especially to a photographic image). Maybe I need to think again about the more mundane uses to which people may put the endless images they create.</div> <p /> <div style="">For anybody who is interested I have compiled below a starter list of links about some of the thinkers and philosophers who have occupied my thoughts both lately and for a while...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil&amp;eacute;m_Flusser" target="_new">Vil&eacute;m Flusser</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes" target="_new">Roland Barthes</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baudrillard" target="_new">Jean Baudrillard</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida" target="_new">Jacques Derrida</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze">Gilles Deleuze</a></div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault" target="_new">Michel Foucault</a></div> <p /> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/intersect.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Metanoid Intersections</a></div> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-slipping-through-the-g">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-slipping-through-the-g#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/gNRuMPuXTuo" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-slipping-through-the-g Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:50:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/IoKzPGJ7vUE/metanoid-intersections-its-all-black-white http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-all-black-white <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/y9wVkt5RR4ChVnp8qe4PoY0v47m3wTvo8mxkFeujKfAY3uxbk4vkKzqP1K0o/DSC_5218.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5218" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/a6bbTScvlofbvI29jvtdVQI746VrsH2mQX71kFKADkorCmoqXosJg5eGpjTr/DSC_5218.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"Black and white photographs... translate a theory of optics into an image and thereby put a magic spell on this theory and re-encode theoretical concepts like &lsquo;black&rsquo; and &lsquo;white&rsquo; into states of things. Black and white photographs embody the magic of theoretical thought since they transform the linear discourse of theory into surfaces. Herein lies their peculiar beauty, which is the beauty of the conceptual universe. Many photographers therefore also prefer black and white photographs to colour photographs, because they reveal more clearly the actual significance of the photographs, i.e. the world of concepts.</div> <p> </p><div style="">...Colour photographs are on a higher level of abstraction than black-and-white ones. Black-and-white photographs are more concrete and in this sense more true: They reveal their theoretical origin more clearly, and vice versa: The 'more genuine' the colours of the photograph become, the more untruthful they are, the more they conceal their theoretical origin." <strong>Vil&eacute;m Flusser, <em>Towards A Philosophy Of Photography</em></strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">This image was actually the first I made for this particular series. The object on the left side of the image is a <a href="http://mtapesdesign.com/whibal/" target="_new">WhiBal Certified Neutral Gray Card</a> used for setting the White Balance of a colour photograph so that the colours in the image are as "true" as possible. So there is already an irony attached to this; it's presence in this particular image being totally redundant. In fact, I have hardly ever used the card except on rare occasions where a particular colour in an image (or sometimes, but not always, skin tones) need to precisely match that of the real world referent depicted.</div> <p> <div style="">For me the problem has always been, just as alluded to by Flusser in the extract quoted above, notionally "true" or "genuine" colour has conversely an unreal or untruthful appearance. I say "notionally" true here even though in reality I mean also "measurably" true, although that is perhaps the problem; "truth" here is a moveable feast inextricably linked to perception - "true" but somehow not quite true or "real" enough. It could be that I - and I know I'm not alone here, judging by the fancifully coloured images I see everyday - quite simply find "true" colour renditions disappointing in some way. Such colours may even be what I "see" but they are not what I "imagine". A triumph of the subjective over the objective view. Yet strangely I have always preferred to make monochrome images for that very reason; they seem to be objectively more real to me...</div> <p> <div style="">For the title of this series I have used the term "metanoid" from the Greek word &mu;&epsilon;&tau;ά&nu;&omicron;&iota;&alpha; or "metanoia", meaning literally "changing one's mind" or, sometimes (especially in a religious sense) "repentance". In any case it is a word that can carry within it both positive and negative connotations according to context. At the time it was to reflect the possibility, but no more, that I may change my mind about a number of issues pertaining to the nature of photography that I have been exploring for some time now. With hindsight, and in the case of this particular image, that seems even more prescient than I may have thought at the time. In fact, I have had it in mind that sooner or later, whatever my preferences may be, I would need to come to terms with the "fact" of colour photography. Hitherto, however, I had always felt a reluctance to embark on this project. Basically that has been down to a deep uncertainty as to how to first approach the problem; to just simply start making colour images seemingly not being an option.</div> <p> <div style="">Lately, however, I have come to believe that I may, just may, have discovered a future direction to explore here. My reading of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil&amp;eacute;m_Flusser" target="_new">Flusser</a>, coupled with a study of the work of German photographer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ruff" target="_new">Thomas Ruff</a>, has pointed up the source of much of my problematic attitude to colour. As Flusser says above, "genuine" colours do, at least for me, too seem "untruthful" and it is that, more than anything, I now see as the starting point for what I seek to explore. Ruff's colour images too, in their muted but undoubted "faithfulness" to measurably "true" colour, have an "other worldly" strangeness to them. It's as if they lack, for all their "truthfulness", a basic "believability". As if, also, to say "this is the world, this is how it appears, and yet somehow it isn't enough". Though I hesitate to use the word here, indeed "disappointing" is exactly what springs to mind. I think, too, that somehow in the bright world of imagination (in both senses of the word: imagination, as in "thought" or "dreams" and imag-ination as in the "making of images") everything must be more than it is; the mundane, the "actual" is not what we actively seek. The same applies, as Flusser indeed observes above, to the "theoretical" and "conceptual" world of images.</div> <p> <div style="">So maybe I have found my way, at least for now. I shall be looking to make colour images in the future. Only not with a notion of representing the world through the photographic image as it really is but to explore in more depth just why I believe such an ambition to be basically untenable...</div> <p> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/intersect.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Metanoid Intersections</a></div> </p></p></p></p></p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-all-black-white">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-all-black-white#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/IoKzPGJ7vUE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-all-black-white Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:27:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/LzITktbdeGI/metanoid-intersections-mnemosynes-handmaiden http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-mnemosynes-handmaiden <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/EECMpkOhti9wdWEfqCZDGRZvun3nB6guVRHqxL2fWdHu7a4K3b63pARyyirF/DSC_5262.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5262" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Q7hqu152dV6jrxDHSjVYfGRGYTvLMCMFVZLfM32MXERvJeLEIFQMuCwv0Zp6/DSC_5262.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"Every photograph is a dead moment. A time insect, preserved and impaled. It is highly unlikely that a photograph of Marcel Proust's old aunt would have plunged him into such an ecstasy of memory as the aroma of the little shell-like pastry he once ate at her house in Combray." <strong>Botho Strauss</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">In the previous two posts I quoted at length thoughts on the nature of the photographic image by two philosophers, Jean Baudrillard and Vil&eacute;m Flusser. And it is true that I have a fascination for studying the works of such worthy thinkers on the deep implications inherent in the very act of photography, or image making in general. It is true, too, that I am particularly drawn to what may be roughly termed "Post-Structuralist" thought. Lately, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism" target="_new">Post-Structuralism</a> has had a bad rap for being the driving force behind much of the more tedious Post-Modernist art of the late 20th C and often rightly so. The problem, so it seems to me, is that many artists took Post-Structuralist theory and used it to prescribe the art they made. Often the result was little more than a puerile and dimly understood "illustration" of difficult (some may say impenetrable) theories. For me, such study as I undertake (hardly rigorously, I may add) is purely an attempt to make sense of what I do and have done not to "drive" what I may do. Still, it is also true that there is what one may term the pre-planning stage when one may ponder over what to do next in a more or less conscious way and then there are also, undoubtedly, times after the fact, as it were, when one may mull over at one's leisure the implications of what one has done, and more importantly why, that may not have been consciously self evident at the time. Above all, however, I remain a photographer, an artist even possibly, but certainly no philosopher or yet a serious student of philosophy and my quoting of thinkers, philosophers etc. on photography is more in the way of questioning than confident assertions.</div> <p> <div style="">But back to the quote above by German playwright, essayist and novelist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botho_Strau&amp;szlig;" target="_new">Botho Strauss</a>, who goes on to write:"The captured image cannot be more than a medium for the real. It never stimulates the soul or the limbic system as directly as smell or taste. The shift into a past experience happens abruptly and unduly directly, it actually has nothing to do with memory at all." and further... "So the photograph may trigger an act of remembering, using a relatively slow data carrier, but it always remains something that has been captured, a false present, and stirs the memory less than the flowing stream of fragrance and melody." The truth of this was made clear to me when I selected the family snapshot for use in the image above. I had thought it to be a snap of my grandmother's brother-in-law, my (dimly remembered) "Uncle Jack". The photograph appeared to be of him as a much younger man than I could remember but still the act of seeing the photograph made me think of such memories as I did have of him. You could say that it acted as a "trigger" for these memories, an "aide memoire", though the actual image itself didn't bear any relation to the image of the man I remembered, that of a dapper and but little old man. It was then that I realised that what I actually remembered was what my grandmother and my father had told me about their memories of Jack, so not "memories" of mine at all. I guess this is how personal family memories become a sort of cultural family memory; by the passing on to new generations. I should add at this point, however, that as far as family snapshots go I may be peculiarly immune. I have never in my life made a point of "documenting" events etc. in my family life (not just family life either). This may be a strange thing for a photographer; on the other hand maybe not. In any event I have always preferred the predictable unreliability of memory to the unpredictably misleading "certainty" of the photographic image.</div> <p> <div style="">Since making the image I have looked again at the photograph and, at first uncertain whether it was actually of "Uncle Jack", I am now certain that it is not. In fact I have no clue who it is of. For the purpose of the discussion here it matters little however. My family being what it is, even were it to have been a photo of Jack, I know with some certainty that I am the only living family member who would know that (even though it turns out that even I was mistaken, but you know what I mean). All my mistake means is that the eventual inevitability of the "loss of identity" of the person represented in the image has become a fact now. In other words the identity of the man in what, arguably, can no longer be termed a "family snapshot" has effectively become "anonymous". The image has essentially been cut adrift to join a great mass of such images. With no pretensions of being art (a perhaps too hasty judgement, however. Snapshots have been viewed as art before. In fact Sontag argues that ALL photographs acquire the status of art with the passage of sufficient time. An assertion I find it difficult to agree with) does that mean the image has become "value free" as it were (as opposed to "valueless" which I am certain it is)?&nbsp;</div> <p> <div style="">As to the image itself I can suppose there is insufficient information contained within it to be of any interest to future social historians. Neither, though it does have some charm, is there anything "quirky" or amusing about it to pique a viewer's interest. Yet, for me, viewing it does induce some personal memories of the era that the image was made in (OK the photograph probably represents a time before I was born but things changed more slowly in those days and what applied then also applied for my early years of existence). I remember that though, surprisingly, more people actually owned a camera (usually of the "box" variety) than may be supposed, unlike today, people were not in the habit of carrying it with them everywhere they went. In fact, the camera would mostly remain in it's cheap canvas case stored in a drawer somewhere. A roll of film, usually of 12 to 16 exposures, would possibly remain in the camera for a year. When the camera was fetched out to be used it was an event. People dressed up in their best clothes to be photographed, to be seen at their best. Even if (especially if) they were poor the image that they wished to project was one of dignity and a certain (albeit often spurious) status (the working classes would aspire to "appear" middle class. The middle classes would wish their actual status confirmed). And they would always strike an appropriate (here "appropriate" means "socially acceptable") pose. In other words they were anxious to project not their true selves but their (mostly wishful) self image, though I doubt they would have realised it. Or maybe they did. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes" target="_new">Barthes</a> has written of the experience of being photographed, "I constitute myself in the process of "posing", I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image." On reflection, I suppose few people are so consciously self aware...</div> <p> <div style="">Now, everything I have written above is with the benefit of hindsight. My initial purpose in making the image was really just a vague musing on the implications of photographing a photograph. Although, stylistically the blurring and imprecision of the image itself matched the other images in the series I did, also, have a vague notion about the implications of Richter's practice of making paintings from photographs, in his early "Photo-paintings" especially, and his stylistic device of blurring the image thus represented. Essentially, I thought that as I was photographing a photograph that what I was doing was somehow different but I realised that making an image of an image, no matter what the medium, original and or eventual, one used, many of the issues and implications remained the same. The original image is transformed in a way that far transcends the notion of merely "copying" or "reproducing". I had thought too that by using blur to "scramble" as it were any information contained within the the original image an would serve as an aid to making this transformation clearer. It is only later I realised that such an affectation was not always necessary especially in the case of the image I chose whose information had become, to all intents and purposes, redundant.</div> <p> <div style="">Barthes often, too, mused on the concept of a photograph as a "prefiguration" of death, the death of the moment preserved, of the information contained within and also finally of the living subject depicted. In some sense this is true... and equally it could be said that the image itself I chose had long since, in a sense, "died". By including it in my new image I suppose it could be said that I have injected a new lease of life into it (albeit a life as "other" than what it was). Still, if I have, I have only postponed the inevitable. The question remains too: For just how long?</div> <p> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/intersect.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Metanoid Intersections</a></div> </p></p></p></p></p></p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-mnemosynes-handmaiden">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-mnemosynes-handmaiden#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/LzITktbdeGI" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-mnemosynes-handmaiden Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:14:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/mA9eGWYs4nw/metanoid-intersections-its-a-kind-of-magic http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-a-kind-of-magic <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/3auNqQFgQQ2uJD8p2IN8Mkvsj7wCHWw3Zk2muuGabuNn0xJzlotZpBaVXVc2/DSC_5224.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5224" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/uXeaUBnDiUjAzVbg1tHVnPGg7FkI8RymFJee6xNE8U7WzvNm2BXVhwB4YnV9/DSC_5224.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"The intention of texts is to explain images, while that of concepts is to make ideas comprehensible. In this way, texts are a metacode of images." <strong>Vil&eacute;m Flusser</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">"Images are significant surfaces. Images signify - mainly - something 'out there' in space and time that they heve to make comprehensible to us as abstractions (as the reductions of the four dimensions of space and time to the two surface dimensions). This specific ability to abstract surfaces out of space and time and to project them back into space and time is what is known as 'imagination'. It is the pre-condition for the production and decoding of images. In other words: the ability to encode phenomena into two-dimensional symbols and to read these symbols.</div> <p> <div style="">The significance of images is on the surface. One can take them in at a single glance yet this remains superficial. If one wishes to deepen the significance, i.e. to reconstruct the abstracted dimensions, one has to allow one's gaze to wander over the surface feeling the way as one goes. This wandering over the surface of the image is called 'scanning'. In so doing, one's gaze follows a complex path formed, on the one hand, by the structure of the image and, on the other, by the observer's intentions. The significance of the image as revealed in the process of scanning therefore represents a synthesis of two intentions: one manifested in the image and the other belonging to the observer. It follows that images are not 'denotative' (unambiguous) complexes of symbols (like numbers, for example) but 'connotative' (ambiguous) complexes of symbols: They provide space for interpretation.</div> <p> <div style="">While wandering over the surface of the image, one's gaze takes in one element after another and produces temporal relationships between them. It can return to an element of the image it has already seen, and 'before' can become 'after': The time reconstructed by scanning is an eternal recurrence of the same process. Simultaneously, however, one's gaze also produces significant relationships between elements of the image. It can return again and again to a specific element of the image and elevate it to the level of a carrier of the image's significance. Then complexes of significance arise in which one element bestows significance on another and from which the carrier derives its own significance: The space reconstructed by scanning is the space of mutual significance.</div> <p> <div style="">This space and time peculiar to the image is none other than the world of magic, a world in which everything is repeated and in which everything participates in a significant context. Such a world is structurally different from that of the linear world of history in which nothing is repeated and in which everything has causes and will have consequences. For example: in the historical world, sunrise is the cause of the cock&rsquo;s crowing; in the magical one, sunrise signifies crowing and crowing signifies sunrise. The significance of images is magical.</div> <p> <div style="">The magical nature of images must be taken into account when decoding them. Thus it is wrong to look for 'frozen events' in images. Rather they replace events by states of things and translate them into scenes. The magical power of images lies in their superficial nature, and the dialectic inherent in them - the contradiction peculiar to them - must be seen in the light of this magic."</div> <p> <div style=""><strong>Vil&eacute;m Flusser, <em>Towards a Philosophy of Photography</em></strong></div> <p> <p> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/intersect.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Metanoid Intersections</a></div> </p></p></p></p></p></p></p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-a-kind-of-magic">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-a-kind-of-magic#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/mA9eGWYs4nw" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-its-a-kind-of-magic Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:06:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/tqgBV5j6fL8/metanoid-intersections-the-disappearance-of-o http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-the-disappearance-of-o <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/YEVr7E3YaqEseyC84qmIb4ZEZEusupUVIbwZz9ExtHfCGjJDwH5TxlSPhyNr/DSC_5261.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5261" height="400" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/nW19aqoMZB24zblTYxoChGPgKUuIg99gnnjt8QDpXqAUqgl7wDgaPRAZNEKW/DSC_5261.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"The photographic gaze has a sort of nonchalance which non-intrusively captures the apparition of objects. It does not seek to probe or analyze reality. Instead, the photographic gaze is "literally" applied on the surface of things to illustrate their apparition as fragments. It is a very brief revelation, immediately followed by the disappearance of the objects." <strong>Jean Baudrillard</strong></div> </blockquote> <p /> <div style=""><strong>Jean Baudrillard - <em>Photography, Or The Writing of Light -</em>&nbsp;translated by Fran&ccedil;ois Debrix</strong></div> <p /> <div style="">The miracle of photography, of its so-called objective image, is that it reveals a radically non-objective world. It is a paradox that the lack of objectivity of the world is disclosed by the photographic lens (objectif). Analysis and reproduction (ressemblance) are of no help in solving this problem. The technique of photography takes us beyond the replica into the domain of the trompe l'oeil. Through its unrealistic play of visual techniques, its slicing of reality, its immobility, its silence, and its phenomenological reduction of movements, photography affirms itself as both the purest and the most artificial exposition of the image.</div> <p /> <div style="">At the same time, photography transforms the very notion of technique. Technique becomes an opportunity for a double play: it amplifies the concept of illusion and the visual forms. A complicity between the technical device and the world is established. The power of objects and of "objective" techniques converge. The photographic act consists of entering this space of intimate complicity, not to master it, but to play along with it and to demonstrate that nothing has been decided yet (rendre evidente l'idee que les jeux ne sont pas faits). "What cannot be said must be kept silent." But what cannot be said can also be kept silent through a display of images.</div> <p /> <div style="">The idea is to resist noise, speech, rumors by mobilizing photography's silence; to resist movements, flows, and speed by using its immobility; to resist the explosion of communication and information by brandishing its secrecy; and to resist the moral imperative of meaning by deploying its absence of signification. What above all must be challenged is the automatic overflow of images, their endless succession, which obliterates not only the mark of photography (le trait), the poignant detail of the object (its punctum), but also the very moment of the photo, immediately passed, irreversible, hence always nostalgic. The instantaneity of photography is not to be confused with the simultaneity of real time. The flow of pictures produced and erased in real time is indifferent to the third dimension of the photographic moment. Visual flows only know change. The image is no longer given the time to become an image. To be an image, there has to be a moment of becoming which can only happen when the rowdy proceedings of the world are suspended and dismissed for good. The idea, then, is to replace the triumphant epiphany of meaning with a silent apophany of objects and their appearances.</div> <p /> <div style="">Against meaning and its aesthetic, the subversive function of the image is to discover literality in the object (the photographic image, itself an expression of literality, becomes the magical operator of reality's disappearance). In a sense, the photographic image materially translates the absence of reality which "is so obvious and so easily accepted because we already have the feeling that nothing is real" (Borges). Such a phenomenology of reality's absence is usually impossible to achieve. Classically, the subject outshines the object. The subject is an excessively blinding source of light. Thus, the literal function of the image has to be ignored to the benefit of ideology, aesthetics, politics, and of the need to make connections with other images. Most images speak, tell stories; their noise cannot be turned down. They obliterate the silent signification of their objects. We must get rid of everything that interferes with and covers up the manifestation of silent evidence. Photography helps us filter the impact of the subject. It facilitates the deployment of the objects's own magic (black or otherwise).</div> <p /> <div style="">Photography also enables a technical perfection of the gaze (through the lens) which can protect the object from aesthetic transfiguration. The photographic gaze has a sort of nonchalance which non-intrusively captures the apparition of objects. It does not seek to probe or analyze reality. Instead, the photographic gaze is "literally" applied on the surface of things to illustrate their apparition as fragments. It is a very brief revelation, immediately followed by the disappearance of the objects.</div> <p /> <div style="">But no matter which photographic technique is used, there is always one thing, and one thing only, that remains: the light. Photo-graphy: The writing of light. The light of photography remains proper to the image. Photographic light is not "realistic" or "natural." It is not artificial either. Rather, this light is the very imagination of the image, its own thought. It does not emanate from one single source, but from two different, dual ones: the object and the gaze. "The image stands at the junction of a light which comes from the object and another which comes from the gaze" (Plato).</div> <p /> <div style="">This is exactly the kind of light we find in Edward Hopper's work. His light is raw, white, ocean-like, reminiscent of sea shores. Yet, at the same time, it is unreal, emptied out, without atmosphere, as if it came from another shore (venue d'un autre littoral). It is an irradiating light which preserves the power of black and white contrasts, even when colors are used. The characters, their faces, the landscapes are projected into a light that is not theirs. They are violently illuminated from outside, like strange objects, and by a light which announces the imminence of an unexpected event. They are isolated in an aura which is both extremely fluid and distinctly cruel. It is an absolute light, literally photographic, which demands that one does not look at it but, instead, that one closes one's eyes on the internal night it contains. There is in Hopper's work a luminous intuition similar to that found in Vermeer's painting. But the secret of Vermeer's light is its intimacy whereas, in Hopper, the light reveals a ruthless exteriority, a brilliant materiality of objects and of their immediate fulfillment, a revelation through emptiness.</div> <p /> <div style="">This raw phenomenology of the photographic image is a bit like negative theology. It is "apophatic," as we used to call the practice of proving God's existence by focusing on what he wasn't rather than on what he was. The same thing happens with our knowledge of the world and its objects. The idea is to reveal such a knowledge in its emptiness, by default (en creux) rather than in an open confrontation (in any case impossible). In photography, it is the writing of light which serves as the medium for this elision of meaning and this quasi-experimental revelation (in theoretical works, it is language which functions as the thought's symbolic filter).</div> <p /> <div style="">In addition to such an apophatic approach to things (through their emptiness), photography is also a drama, a dramatic move to action (passage a l'acte), which is a way of seizing the world by "acting it out." Photography exorcizes the world through the instantaneous fiction of its representation (not by its representation directly; representation is always a play with reality). The photographic image is not a representation; it is a fiction. Through photography, it is perhaps the world itself that starts to act (qui passe a l'acte) and imposes its fiction. Photography brings the world into action (acts out the world, is the world's act) and the world steps into the photographic act (acts out photography, is photography's act). This creates a material complicity between us and the world since the world is never anything more than a continuous move to action (a continuous acting out).</div> <p /> <div style="">In photography, we see nothing. Only the lens "sees" things. But the lens is hidden. It is not the Other which catches the photographer's eye, but rather what's left of the Other when the photographer is absent (quand lui n'est pas la). We are never in the real presence of the object. Between reality and its image, there is an impossible exchange. At best, one finds a figurative correlation between reality and the image. "Pure" reality -- if there can be such a thing -- is a question without an answer. Photography also questions "pure reality." It asks questions to the Other. But it does not expect an answer. Thus, in his short-story "The Adventure of a Photographer," Italo Calvino writes: "To catch Bice in the street when she didn't not know he was watching her, to keep her in the range of hidden lenses, to photograph her not only without letting himself be seen but without seeing her, to surprise her as if she was in the absence of his gaze, of any gaze...It was an invisible Bice that he wanted to possess, a Bice absolutely alone, a Bice whose presence presupposed the absence of him and everyone else." Later, Calvino's photographer only takes pictures of the studio walls by which she once stood. But Bice has completely disappeared. And the photographer too has disappeared. We always speak in terms of the disappearance of the object in photography. It once was; it no longer is. There is indeed a symbolic murder that is part of the photographic act. But it is not simply the murder of the object. On the other side of the lens, the subject too is made to disappear. Each snapshot simultaneously ends the real presence of the object and the presence of the subject. In this act of reciprocal disappearance, we also find a transfusion between object and subject. It is not always a successful transfusion. To succeed, one condition must be met. The Other -- the object -- must survive this disappearance to create a "poetic situation of transfer" or a "transfer of poetic situation." In such a fatal reciprocity, one perhaps finds the beginning of a solution to the problem of society's so-called "lack of communicability." We may find an answer to the fact that people and things tend to no longer mean anything to each other. This is an anxious situation that we generally try to conjure away by forcing more signification.</div> <p /> <div style="">But there are only a few images that can escape this desire of forced signification. There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea, whatever that idea might be (but, in particular, the ideas of information and testimony are salient). A moral anthropology has already intervened. The idea of man has already interfered. This is why contemporary photography (and not only photo-journalism) is used to take pictures of "real victims," "real dead people," and "real destitutes" who are thus abandoned to documentary evidence and imaginary compassion. Most contemporary photos only reflect the "objective" misery of the human condition. One can no longer find a primitive tribe without the necessary presence of some anthropologist. Similarly, one can no longer find a homeless individual surrounded by garbage without the necessary presence of some photographer who will have to "immortalize" this scene on film. In fact, misery and violence affect us far less when they are readily signified and openly made visible. This is the principle of imaginary experience (la loi de l'imaginaire). The image must touch us directly, impose on us its peculiar illusion, speak to us with its original language in order for us to be affected by its content. To operate a transfer of affect into reality, there has to be a definite (resolu) counter-transfer of the image.</div> <p /> <div style="">We deplore the disappearance of the real under the weight of too many images. But let's not forget that the image disappears too because of reality. In fact, the real is far less often sacrificed than the image. The image is robbed of its originality and given away to shameful acts of complicity. Instead of lamenting the relinquishing of the real to superficial images, one would do well to challenge the surrender of the image to the real. The power of the image can only be restored by liberating the image from reality. By giving back to the image its specificity (its "stupidity" according to Rosset), the real itself can rediscover its true image.</div> <p /> <div style="">So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example. It prefers to take pictures not of what is but of what should not be from a moral or humanitarian perspective. Meanwhile, it still makes good aesthetic, commercial and clearly immoral use of everyday misery. These photos are not the witness of reality. They are the witness of the total denial of the image from now on designed to represent what refuses to be seen. The image is turned into the accomplice of those who choose to rape the real (viol du reel). The desperate search for the image often gives rise to an unfortunate result. Instead of freeing the real from its reality principle, it locks up the real inside this principle. What we are left with is a constant infusion of "realist" images to which only "retro-images" respond. Every time we are being photographed, we spontaneously take a mental position on the photographer's lens just as his lens takes a position on us. Even the most savage of tribesmen has learned how to spontaneously strike a pose. Everybody knows how to strike a pose within a vast field of imaginary reconciliation.</div> <p /> <div style="">But the photographic event resides in the confrontation between the object and the lens (l'objectif), and in the violence that this confrontation provokes. The photographic act is a duel. It is a dare launched at the object and a dare of the object in return. Everything that ignores this confrontation is left to find refuge in the creation of new photographic techniques or in photography's aesthetics. These are easier solutions.</div> <p /> <div style="">One may dream of a heroic age of photography when it still was a black box (a camera obscura) and not the transparent and interactive space that it has become. Remember those 1940s farmers from Arkansas whom Mike Disfarmer shot. They were all humble, conscientiously and ceremonially standing in front of the camera. The camera did not try to understand them or even catch them by surprise. There was no desire to capture what's "natural" about them or "what they look like as photographed." They are what they are. They do not smile. They do not complain. The image does not complain. They are, so to speak, caught in their simplest attire (dans leur plus simple appareil), for a fleeting moment, that of photography. They are absent from their lives and their miseries. They are elevated from their miseries to the tragic, impersonal figuration of their destiny. The image is revealed for what it is: it exalts what it sees as pure evidence, without interference, consensus, and adornment. It reveals what is neither moral nor "objective," but instead remains unintelligible about us. It exposes what is not up to reality but is, rather, reality's evil share (malin genie) whether it is a fortunate one or not. It displays what is inhuman in us and does not signify.</div> <p /> <div style="">In any case, the object is never anything more than an imaginary line. The world is an object that is both imminent and ungraspable. How far is the world? How does one obtain a clearer focus point? Is photography a mirror which briefly captures this imaginary line of the world? Or is it man who, blinded by the enlarged reflection of his own consciousness, falsifies visual perspectives and blurs the accuracy of the world? Is it like the rearview mirrors of American cars which distort visual perspectives but give you a nice warning - "objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear"? But, in fact, aren't these objects farther than they appear? Does the photographic image bring us closer to a so-called "real world" which is in fact infinitely distant? Or does this image keep the world at a distance by creating an artificial depth perception which protects us from the imminent presence of the objects and from their virtual danger?</div> <p /> <div style="">What is at stake (at play, en jeu) is the place of reality, the question of its degree. It is perhaps not a surprise that photography developed as a technological medium in the industrial age, when reality started to disappear. It is even perhaps the disappearance of reality that triggered this technical form. Reality found a way to mutate into an image. This puts into question our simplistic explanations about the birth of technology and the advent of the modern world. It is perhaps not technologies and media which have caused our now famous disappearance of reality. On the contrary, it is probable that all our technologies (fatal offsprings that they are) arise from the gradual extinction of reality.</div> <p /> <div style=""><strong>Baudrillard, Jean. <em>"Photography, Or The Writing Of Light"</em></strong> &nbsp;Available at <a href="http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=126" target="_new">Ctheory, 2000</a>.</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/intersect.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Metanoid Intersections</a></div> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-the-disappearance-of-o">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-the-disappearance-of-o#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/tqgBV5j6fL8" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/metanoid-intersections-the-disappearance-of-o Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:46:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/rn0Iyrk6C7o/chair-emperors-new-clothes http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chair-emperors-new-clothes <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/MCKbXmrSaRlzQaaYvHJX2PZds4siJ4sm7NBItzvdANbqVSNjGaX9YVP9RZpN/GreenChairColor_01.jpg"><img alt="Greenchaircolor_01" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Uh3HDT3J8nlQ4mFG8ZPYdEbVJokRhjYGdKvsEiNCF0r7kDVRTajyfWfmS9if/GreenChairColor_01.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/GYmFBKpKyHkIptK0j3mn83Z27qkfWhylHx5OV5s3RvdyU4DK5vvLSADEvIBj/GreenChairMono_01.jpg"><img alt="Greenchairmono_01" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/IRmUTtNM5XAQX4lUOCFSmBiUPYUlZg1s1uYGxNlWcywImLTOsmgbR6OmeL5o/GreenChairMono_01.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/WHaToKWqDecdyxResl55Rs9yQwuBXd1aOrZWQnbMmMjBO0eNHWHEQbIvOStn/Two_Chairs_bleach.jpg"><img alt="Two_chairs_bleach" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/SvOOVPCjC4CkOr8VdfZwv1MU92r5HmDEf77hUnDypGIakOqll0XDFnAhcuHf/Two_Chairs_bleach.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/cePfFJ4MkoWxI9hTrqtPDsouVFdXixzP0iSi1pYWGtXzwMfl0pDKL5Qj9kbR/Two_Chairs_halftone.jpg"><img alt="Two_chairs_halftone" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/W0pVndKwuzsgwmgeZoCo6RT40xBP7UGE09Xt78lMvG95lOeJfIn75anJXtO9/Two_Chairs_halftone.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/tffGRAEDWn8p9la0y0Y4XXL7qJeAzZAAUS6Cp43boLZoamy4ldfOsNjMYwYK/Two_Chairs_mono.jpg"><img alt="Two_chairs_mono" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/R4Kgvijmw23awvAo1cs8I6HzGxkgW5aUSg6nvPS0Xfz01dD32UtZLT5MAoF6/Two_Chairs_mono.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/jmfgonaDumWTD46nPiucENHI8XqlnpZeKojVfKBcx1kRZrcNwKbzw1XZtaFx/Two_Chairs_neg.jpg"><img alt="Two_chairs_neg" height="354" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/mAICOG4X7ZCASvfGTEwtCKH6VAZqtF8rpw5sI9komjgjTq6GzAFntc5fKFFt/Two_Chairs_neg.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chair-emperors-new-clothes">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"And yet if there is one thing that Ruff's photos seem to emphatically declare, it is that they have no memory. They are mute and drained of affect. His works speak of a contemporary subjectivity defined by amnesia, expressed through an amnesiac's gaze that is unable to process and connect the various mnemonically embedded images in order to create a deep and layered holistic sense of knowledge." <strong>Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">There is a little known series of images that the German photographer and alumni of the Dusselfdorf School of Photography, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ruff" target="_new">Thomas Ruff</a>, produced in 1982 while living in Paris which he titled "L'Empereur"; a set of theatrical self-portraits in which he photographed himself in different staged positions in relation to two chairs and a floor lamp. In the images, as <a href="http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=103508311197&amp;topic=9383" target="_new">Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev</a> has observed, "The narcissistic emperor changes position, but no one is interested, nor looks at him, nor engages with him. The gaze onto the scene is a detached one, and the emperor is alone."</div> <p /> <div style="">In the same article Christov-Bakargiev writes of the photographic enterprise in general, "At the outset of photography, there seemed to be the real possibility of "printing" a memory, of creating its analog, something truthful and verifiable for future generations. In particular photography held three promises: a democratic promise - of representing all human beings equally (as opposed to the pictorial depictions of the upper classes only, typical of the previously aristocratic times); an indexical promise - the the possibility of knowing exactly what happened at a given time and place (as opposed to the need of an eye witness); and a prosthetic/mnemonic promise - the possibility of extending the brain's physical ability to remember innumerable scenes and events, as if archiving them on an external hard-drive (as opposed to the narrative and mythic recounting of events whose existence is fleeting)." Indeed Walter Benjamin alluded to this when he described the medium as "playing a role akin to psychoanalysis, by making what he calls an 'optical unconscious' accessible to consciousness through it's recordings, thus broadening our knowledge of the world."</div> <p /> <div style="">Such projections of the efficacy and the promise that photography offered the world seem almost laughably untenable now; and yet this is probably still the view held by the overwhelming majority while the constant stream of image input drifts daily past their gaze. Christov-Barkagiev's description of the photographic images of Thomas Ruff that heads this post, for me, merely indicates that Ruff realises this and maybe points it out more succinctly in his work than most photographers. But then most photographers are only concerned with making more "nice" images (and here I don't necessarily mean of "nice" things) to add to the constant stream of "me too" images that I spoke of previously, without ever questioning the basic premise of why photograph something, anything in the first place. They wish to express their feelings about the subjects of their images or merely record; it doesn't matter which if, as may well be the case, the whole enterprise is open to question. Here I don't mean the whole enterprise is meaningless; merely that its actual meaning may be less clear than "surface appearances" would indicate. And here I count myself as a fellow traveller with Herr Ruff. I doubt photography has ever (or can ever) fully achieve the promise held out for it originally. If photography as information, that information is (possibly fatally) flawed. If as an expression of meaning, of personal expression, then I believe this too to be highly problematic.</div> <p /> <div style="">Thinking I was finished with my series of chair images, still I have decided to show, as part of my "Altered States" sets of images which are "variants" on pieces from some of the series I have previously made, this set of images of just one of the chairs (the least prepossessing, design wise, possibly) that I toyed with originally before settling on the final series <a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/chairs.html" target="_new">here</a>. Unlike Ruff I am not "in" these images. Or rather I am - as Ruff himself has said "... I suddenly realised that photography is always a construct of the person behind the lens". OR rather, in another sense, I am not; I have no feeling that I wish to express about this particular chair. Even so the purpose of these "variants" has, still, meaning for me. An intellectual purpose. But how is that to be communicated by merely looking at the images? Something may communicate but how can I be sure it any way resembles my intent? Well, one way, I guess, is to write about it (it may be the only way). So for the record, using the image with the colour bar (the first one above) as an example, here is what I intended for this piece: On the right one can observe a monochrome image of a chair. The colour bar on the left "indicates" the actual colour that one might see from direct observation of the scene depicted; a kind of "do it yourself" colour version. Information presented in its purest form. But, you might ask, why not just present the colour version of the image? Why not indeed... And in fact I have; twice. One "version" you can see in the first of the diptychs shown above. The other is part of my completed series (see link above). Neither of them are "real" in the truest sense. Just two out of a myriad of possible versions (OK... admittedly I have manipulated both to look the way they do, but that is the whole point here). In fact the "colour bars" are a far more faithful indication of the actual colours in the scene (to the limits of my direct observation, at least). In any case it doesn't really matter, the point is made anyway; there is no way to reliably record the actual colour, or anything else, that would be available to a direct observer. So much for information. Incidentally, the version with the monochrome bar uses the same editing "criteria" that I used to create the monochrome image of the chair on the previously constructed colour bar.</div> <p /> <div style="">The other diptychs basically consist of various ways of "looking" at the chair. Or should I see looking at a photograph of the chair. None more (or less) "real" than the others. One consists of a version on the left with a dotted print screen added (admittedly course, the kind one might see in a cheap reproduction on newsprint), one has a "negative" version on the left. The duplicated diptych indicates the kind of "stereo" images once popular, with which, by viewing with the correct apparatus, one might gain a sense of depth from what is essentially a flat rendition on a flat surface. An early kind of "poor man's" 3D if you like. Not that the modern variety is any more informative. In any case the two images shown are identical so even that won't actually work. Smoke and mirrors (minus the smoke) really.</div> <p /> <div style="">So am "I" still "in" the images? Hell, the chair isn't even "in" there...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/states/albums/chairvar.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Altered States:: Chair</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chair-emperors-new-clothes">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chair-emperors-new-clothes#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/rn0Iyrk6C7o" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chair-emperors-new-clothes Thu, 17 Mar 2011 05:36:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/iVbSlr2TmLE/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer <p> <div> <div style=""><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/JVs92XW9p2PlJ3VSazo50XrEFbZZiwbpDLelBtrh4QaQCddZpTpAONBI5OLS/DSC_5373_1.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5373_1" height="750" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/AdhyHBtglY3QlrR6aRLRBSzQVeSOyUuCmTkNGm2K621zzCySBTWrklZMq3xp/DSC_5373_1.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/MYvMPxIBFcGljuhYSZAAuUYtCYw3VSjlATW8nphZczBqws83Mt1mg5TGTouS/black.jpg"><img alt="Black" height="750" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/pVK3UVfKIT3T949Ri2M8TrjJFrhGiE37NDpgjtp9hN4qmA64G4SdQ4lIKg1p/black.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/tRld2KNmy9cjzf0718Kixsq5ESNDjUmCfywjn6Q5Tzo9sTvEcT6gU6RHoGEh/DSC_5373.jpg"><img alt="Dsc_5373" height="725" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/2SKmjXVpPWCVlamTEAvLPNkhI7q0czUuPebAwUgFGJQIUjeBPZweRPtV91Gg/DSC_5373.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/Ko7TiD3k1q8us5VpgrAEozoxrUnEUhueijPbAghyGMAYDD3tvT0zWx5LfANN/chair_03.jpg"><img alt="Chair_03" height="707" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/dR50ckdU9r2LxWENvwA48M3DfcSTJvKT9lYfyZ1NtKypiKPI5Xz3f081RMvh/chair_03.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> <div class='p_see_full_gallery'><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div> </div> </div> <div style=""> <blockquote> <div style="">"I am interested in things which reflect the world rather than my personality." <strong>Jasper Johns</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">While I would readily admit to a shared intention with Johns, there is, I guess, a problem with the above statement; the very fact that one should declare such an intention possibly says a great deal about one's personality. As Thomas Ruff has said, "When I was working on the Portr&auml;ts I suddenly realised that photography is always a construct of the person behind the camera". Nevertheless I have declared that my intention with my "Chair" series of images is that they should say more about the photographic image in general than how I may feel about chairs. But, as I have alluded to before, the truth is that the majority of people who see these images will do so without the "benefit" of my extended explanations, clarifications, justifications in my last few posts here (and, yes, I am including too probably the majority of visitors to this blog who, I suspect, will mostly glance at the images and move on, online attention spans being what they are). This truth has exercised my thoughts a great deal in the past and continues to. So much so that, especially when considering matters of presentation, I will construct in my mind an "imaginary viewer". This can often be a sobering, even depressing, exercise as one realises that the gap between what one wishes to say with an image (or should I say "images", it is always the plural for me) and what the viewer may "read" from them is virtually guaranteed to be far wider than one would like to think.</div> <p /> <div style="">Still, one does what one can... Actually this particular project/series has, unusually for me, been the source of some angst. Well, angst is too strong a word, shall we say some "uncertainties". The period of time between conceiving and making the actual images and settling on the final presentation has been an unusually long one with some false starts and blind alleys on the way. What was never in doubt, however, was that it should be a series of alternative "treatments" or presentation formats for each one of the images. For me, and this is pretty much axiomatic, the single, isolated image can say little beyond its immediately apparent content. While it is true that confronted with such an image my "imaginary viewer" may well conjure up in his/her (or whatever) mind associations, connotations etc. this is mostly just to say that they will construct a narrative based on the content. In the book of Gerhard Richter's "<a href="http://www.gerhard-richter.com/art/overpainted-photographs" target="_new">Overpainted Photographs</a>", Markus Heinzelmann termed the pieces "objects of contemplation" and looking through my copy this is indeed the case. However, as sumptuous and thought provoking as many of the individual images are, one rapidly realises that this contemplative effect is an accumulative one. A series of images encourages contemplation, a single one merely encourages the viewer to drift away on flights of fancy. This reflects, I think, the difference between thinking and musing...</div> <p /> <div style="">Hopefully too, my choice of subject will also have the effect of discouraging any notion of narrative for the viewer. And it may well be that this choice of subject matter and extended treatment of the individual images will also be an intitial source of puzzlement to the "virgin" viewer (one that is untroubled by previous exposure to my erstwhile scribblings) as I believe a basic pre-requisite for thought and contemplation to be unanswered questions. In any case the fact that these images have been treated as a sequence will, I hope, be an indication that there is more to the meaning of the images than (more or less) "nice" images of some "nice" chairs. A fact, I think, hammered home by my presentational treatment of the "fine art print" pieces. It should I hope (pray?) be obvious to the viewer that these pieces indicate that just looking at photographic images is less than what is intended here.</div> <p /> <div style="">And that's it really, I guess. All my written thoughts and clarification notwithstanding, that the viewer may think, that they may realise that there is more going on here than simply meets the eye is as much as one can hope for. Just what the viewer may be induced to think about, ponder on etc. is beyond the control of the artist. That one may provide at least some pointers to the direction of such thoughts can be considered a result here. Where once this may have bothered me, I am now somewhat changed in my attitudes. I've learned to go with the flow. Even though my good friend poet Ralph Hoyte, on the subject of <a href="http://vimeo.com/20867456" target="_new">OPAQUE</a>, a collaborative project we are working, with others, on, recently reminded me that only dead fish go with the flow...</div> <p /> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/chairs.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Chairs</a></div> </div> </div> <p>&nbsp;</p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/iVbSlr2TmLE" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-the-imaginary-viewer Tue, 15 Mar 2011 05:01:00 -0700 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~3/I3dMENZ6AH4/chairs-on-the-surface http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-on-the-surface <p> <div class='p_embed p_image_embed'> <a href="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/p0luhwjPijF8JKMyvClilUDWwm6Ucc8t9mQiZ5GRXwd2CZOwDEfLzgdgs9Zv/chair_04.jpg"><img alt="Chair_04" height="707" src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/iantalbot-retrospective/uZBm2ZvBRnjrKEa8dAYLhmfGk3csjwZ8QimZFqiqq7076yIGtF0InG4Zb1Sn/chair_04.jpg.scaled.500.jpg" width="500" /></a> </div> <blockquote> <div style="">"I want to hide the record of my hand." <strong>Roy Lichtenstein</strong></div> </blockquote> <div style="">Lately I have become increasingly interested in the notion of the absolute pre-eminence of the artist's intention when interpreting an individual piece of work. Notwithstanding the fact that I have, in the past, rather inclined to that view myself, I find myself wondering whether such a view is indeed tenable. It has long been a source of irritation to me to observe the practice of many self styled online "interpreters" who seem to spend large swathes of their day touring artist's blogs etc. leaving mostly inane comments of how this or that piece of art speaks to them and what deep meaning a particular piece may have. This presumably to indicate their deep sensitivity to all things "arty". Never mind that the pieces they read so much into are often little more than daubs or random snapshots unhindered by any actual intention on the part of their perpetrators (of course this is precisely why they select such "victims"; they are mostly glad for any attention, any indication that someone might take their work seriously). You could, in fact, say that part of my reason for writing about what I do here is to discourage such practices (and it seems to work too...). Still I am not in principle opposed to what Gombrich termed the "beholder's share". More than that, I have concluded that it wouldn't matter much if I were opposed. But even more than that I wonder just how much claim an artist should have on their work, it's meaning and interpretation, after it has left their tender care and been sent out into the world to fend for itself. I would add, however, the rider that for me is that it still matters somewhat just who the beholder claiming their share might be...</div> <p> <div style="">All of this, however, has led on to a deeper consideration of concepts of the artist as supreme "auteur" or even "genius" (in the full sense of the word, I mean). Or as someone once put it concepts of the "deconstruction of the artist as auratic subject" which is impenetrable "artspeak" for the idea that, in fact, a viewer can (even should) dismiss the artist and his or her intentionality when interpreting art. Of course, such ideas had their heyday in post-structural theories of reflexivity (yes, I know...) that attached themselves to the Conceptual and Minimalist movements of the late 20th century but still, I believe, apply now. Only the balance may have tipped back towards the autonomous artist's viewpoint. A shift, I might add, largely dictated by the needs and demands of the art market. Tied up with all this too are the shifts in concepts of "authorship" and "ownership", the art piece as a unique and precious object necessitating guarantees of authenticity (or monetary value, in reality), in what is an art world experiencing a paradigm shift as online delivery systems become increasingly important for the dissemination and distribution of art work. The upper echelons of the art market remain, of course, as prices realised on certain artists' work reach ever more dizzying heights. The reality for the rest of us is somewhat different, however...</div> <p> <div style="">For this last set of images from my "Chair" series I have chosen to present them as if they already were Fine Art Prints with all the trappings that may accrue to the genre (including my ironic use of the hopelessly banal double hairline, faux matting I have employed). For this set I have decided to use the digitally distressed (OK... let's name them for what they are; faked distressed prints) versions of my chair images. I suppose the first aspect of the "presentation" that will engage the viewer's attention is what appears to be an oversized signature perversely covering part of the image. At this point I could say that the purpose here is to indicate that, any notions to the contrary, an image is first and foremost a representation of a three dimensional object on a flat surface and the purpose of the signature is to bring the viewers eye back to this surface and anchor it there (a claim I have made in the past to justify the use of such a device). Here such a claim may appear a little disingenuous, however. The actual notion for this device was, in reality, taken from my reading about how, in 1988, Gerhard Richter signed an edition of his "Candle" prints in much the same way. By such an act, while at the same time "authenticating" the individual prints, he also, in effect, obliterated (one could say "vandalised") part of the image itself. Not that I suppose buyers of the edition would have complained, "authentication" being everything at that end of the market. Dismissing any idea of a wish for self-aggrandisement on Richter's part, the large signature also had the effect of thus making it now an integral part of the work itself, the image. It changed the meaning of the work as an art piece, one could say. On the subject of "authenticity" and as a sidenote I might observe too that, in the 60s, Warhol started to "authenticate" his prints with a stamp of his signature. Which when one thinks about it is an almost absurd notion...</div> <p> <div style="">For my print here, however, the "signature" you see is, in fact, not my signature at all, it's not even a scan of my signature; it is merely a handwriting font (as is the chair plus number below it). Furthermore it doesn't merely alter the image it partially covers, it actually is part of the image; just more pixels among the others that comprise the whole image itself. Of course, as it isn't, in fact, my signature it serves no purpose as authentication, a fact that can be readily discerned when one realises that exactly the same "signature" is reproduced in exactly the same position on each of the five images in the set. So to "authenticate" any print made from this series, to provide a guarantee of originality, I would have to sign the print elsewhere, on the back or something. Which brings me to an awkward, if realistic, realisation. Were I to sign it, "authenticate" it, why should anybody care? Just how much is my signature worth? And let's not kid ourselves here. There is a level in the art market that once attained one's signature is what one is really selling as opposed to any individual piece. Especially in the case of print editions that is. All this means, I suppose, is that anybody buying my prints is doing so because they like them. This, of course, should be a source of some gratification for me. But I'm not entirely sure it is...</div> <p> <div style="">This finally brings me to some personal observations of mine about the absurd notion of no-name artists offering "Limited Editions" of their work. It seems every artist and his or her dog is offering them these days. This is predicated on a total misunderstanding of the concept and purpose of Limited Editions, which are largely dictated by the needs of the art market. The reality for the overwhelming majority of artists is that, unless offered in an edition of a handful, your Limited (availability) Edition will never sell out. Which in itself kind of makes the whole process a pointless exercise. Neither will it increase in value. You don't believe me? Suffice to say that my wife regularly brings home from charity shops etc. signed, limited edition prints (&pound;2-3 apiece, thank you very much). Neither should you think they are merely garbage either. Some of them we have framed and are on my wall. To my, I like at least to think, not unsophisticated eye and tastes they are highly acceptable as pieces of art. Not, it appears however, quite the wise investment they may have once seemed. The fact that there are now a large number of relatively unsophisticated buyers online readily taken in by the concept of the added value of such Limited Edition Prints is not exactly the point here. A Limited Edition Print for &pound;20-30 (as I often see)? Do me a favour...</div> <p> <div style=""><a href="http://www.objectively-speaking.com/galleries/new/albums/chairs.html" target="_new">Objectively Speaking :: Chairs</a></div> </p></p></p></p></p> </p> <p><a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-on-the-surface">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-on-the-surface#comment">Leave a comment&nbsp;&nbsp;&raquo;</a> </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanTalbotRetrospective/~4/I3dMENZ6AH4" height="1" width="1"/> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/1307273/DSC_5100.jpg http://posterous.com/users/36jzb4A9g9Vv Ian Talbot iantalbot Ian Talbot http://iantalbot-retrospective.posterous.com/chairs-on-the-surface