ku # 406

Photographic truth and the real - so my question is, what's not true or a reflection/trace of the real here?...

Michelle C. Parent

This past year has been a full of changes for me. My somewhat cozy life was ripped apart when my then husband asked for a divorce. Well, things like that rock one's world on many levels. In my world, I started to find dissatisfaction in other parts of my life. I was already seeing a counselor for childhood issues and she became invaluable during this troubled time. I noticed that I talked to her about spiritual things as well as my photography. I found that I was cleaning house on the physical level with moving him out and rearranging things to cleaning my inner house out. This led to me finding my photography dissatisfying. I would go out to shoot pictures and the time out in nature was very soothing, but then I would pop the flash card in, process the photos, and feel no emotional connection to the shots. They looked like anybody could have done them, to me. I felt that I was doing that same old thing. I began to think about how I used to feel about nature as a child. I remembered how I loved fairy tales and how I thought that certain places used to look like they were part of the fairy tales and I used to imagine that there really were fairies and elves living in there and it made it more fun and magical and mysterious for me. I wanted to recapture that feeling and transmit that into my photography. I decided my photography needed to have more emotion, magic and mystery. So, I have been spending my time in the fields and woods, reconnecting to my childhood feelings of magic and mystery and hoping it is transmitting itself to my eyes and hands as they do the physical act of creating the photograph. I am still in flux, so to speak. I still feel unsure and wobbly, on my newfound legs in this new photographic endeavor I have embarked upon, but I hope to grow as it grows.

photopop 7.0 ~ entropy and order

Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

- emily dickinson

ku # 405

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." ~ Sigmund Freud (attributed but unsubstantiated). I do like it though when the cigar is true to the idea and the formal characteristics of "cigar".

Mary Dennis ~ Barriers and Solutions

I think I have figured out that there's a pretty strong connection between what I am feeling and what I choose to photograph. On the morning I shot this image I was feeling a bit worn down, numb and frustrated from dealing with a series of family matters. I have passed this grassy hill, this concrete barrier, this chain link fence probably a hundred times on my regular walks, but on this morning it spoke to me as I passed by. I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about it at the moment I photographed it, but when I got home and viewed it on the computer I realized it was very much an equivalent to what was going on in my head. As in : there are ways around these barriers and they really aren't all that difficult to figure out. Now I can't say that my photographs are always a reflection of a mood, a feeling or an emotion. Sometimes a scene just lights up my eyes and mind and I trip the shutter. However, on this morning, concrete and chain link with green grass and a blue sky on the horizon pretty much summed it up.

ku # 403 and a commentary for your consideration

Some guy, John C Dvorak to be exact, has published an article in which he unequivocally states, "Photography, by nature, is an inaccurate purveyor of the truth....There is seldom truth in a photo....most of them are fakes in the sense that they don't capture reality..."

Well, scratch my back with a hacksaw. What the hell was I thinking?

While these notions certainly have been fashionable in photo-academia for some time, it's somewhat distressing to find a media pundit - with no apparent connection to photography (other than as grist for a column on technology) or photo-academia - speaking ex cathedra to the masses about ideas photographic. It is especially distressing when the idea in play involves the characteristic of the medium that marks photography as truly distinct from and unique amongst other visuals arts.

Simply stated, Photography, by the nature of its mechanistic method of recording of what lies within the field of view of a camera (lens attached), is capable of precisely describing (with great clarity) the object of its attention - what some label as the referent or the denoted. It can, and often does present, a denoted visual truth. The fact that the photographer (in some instances, an artist) has isolated the referent from its total environment and further still isolated it as a disconnected segment from the stream of time certainly posits the photograph as a fraction of a truth, but a truth nonetheless.

Additionally, and in no small measure, photography is also fully capable of capturing/expressing a connoted truth. In the famous photograph of the running young Vietnamese napalm-wounded girl (the denoted "truth"), there are many possible connoted "truths" - war sucks, napalm hurts, the plight of innocent victims of war (collateral damage) is unconscionable, etc.

IMO, the problem with the notion of photographic truth is not whether it "exists" but, rather, why so many photographers use this defining visual characteristic of the medium to create untruths.

ku # 399

Forever Wild Development Corporation - the name is a carried-over relic from the '50s. The person(s) who created it either had a wicked sense of humor or no sense of irony. For all I know, it made some kind of sense back in the old days. "Forever wild" is the common title applied to Article XIV of the New York State Constitution (adopted in 1894) which states that “The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve...shall be forever kept as wild forest lands."

Jim Jirka ~ Autumn Awakening

I have been in the creative doldrums lately. Today I decided to go out and take a walk, to clear my head, maybe. There is actually not much content up there to really clear. Just went with the camera, no encumbrances of a tripod, one lens and an open mind.

I found today to be a transition, not so much as autumn arriving, but that autumn is just a season, a time of the year. Not so much delineated by the so-called colors and people’s perception that autumn sucks, if the colorful, pretty leaves are not there. I for one find solace in the understanding of autumn, of the actual ritual of the leaves dying out and withering away and the change in the air as the days grow shorter. I enjoy the sounds as the leaves fall to the ground, the wind gently blowing through the trees and the crunching of the grasses as they dry out.

I was very creative today, making images that strengthened my interpretation of autumn, and awakened me from my doldrums.

Tom Gallione ~ A Gathering of Leaves

Late afternoon light in the late autumn of last year. The voyage ends here on the surface of Park Creek for a small congregation of dead leaves. When the leaf-peeping parties are over, this is what remains. I always come late. - More than mere visual representations of reality, I strive to make interpretations that invite further thought and musing. I prefer the subtle and contemplative over the bold and dramatic, and suggestions over descriptions.