Speaking of Caponigro...

[tim atherton]

"While in Ireland, Paul came across a herd of over 30 stark white deer. He was anxious to photograph the eye-capturing animals, but the task seemed impossible due to their disorganization. He approached the herder and asked to use the sheepdog to gather the deer and lead them. Paul was not sure whether or not the dog could handle the tasks, and if so, in which direction it would send the herd. Paul set up his view camera in some bushes across from a bountiful tree. He waited patiently. "I thought, well here I am in the middle of nowhere, let's see what the fairies give me." As luck, or magic, would have it, the deer sprinted practically in single file format right into his view. As soon as they hit the edge of his view camera, he shot the image"

So what? It's a lovely photograph.

[Chris Gittins]

>"While in Ireland, Paul came across a herd of over 30 stark white deer...

Kind of an interesting in the context of his still lives - trying to set up a dynamic scene vs constructing a static one. I shoot a lot of moving water and I can relate to wanting to coax something out of the scene - not something I'm able to do, but I have on occassion wished I could do it. In lieu of control, I wait for what I want. Sometimes I stand there for half an hour ready to trip the shutter and it never happens. There's a lot of "Let's see what the [ocean] give[s] me." I have a general sense of what to expect based on the tides, weather and season but, as with Caponigro photographing the deer, the images aren't ones you can script or predict in any detail.

Chris

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I also was kind of let-down when I leanred that his most famous photograph, the white running deer, was actually a set up situation.



Oh c'mon Brian, anybody that has seen that photograph has to know it was a set up. The chances of him setting up his camera and then having a herd of deer run in front of it randomly are infenitiesimal. I think even as a set up the print is great because he "saw" the potential photograph.

[Mark Sawyer]

Oh, now I suppose you guys are gonna tell me he actually *arranged* those rocks and shells and leaves in his recent still-lifes...

"I generally like his photographs and admire his technical ability but I've never gotten all the metaphysical/art-speak stuff others say they see in his work. Which isn't a criticism of those who see it, I just don't."

I can only catch glimpses and suggestions of it, Brian, which is part of the fascination, maybe. We're already so ham-strung trying to discuss meaning in photographs. It's a purely visual language, and doesn't translate well into words. "Bunch of blurry running white deer in front of dark foliage, really well-printed" might describe what the photograph is of, but do you respond at all to those words nearly the same as you do to the photograph?

Photography can be hard to talk about, art-speak is frustrating, and in the modern world, anything ethereal is always dubious and nebulous. It's encouraging that people can sense things as abstract as the stillness, serenity, silence, the lyrical or musical. Maybe some of us confuse these in looking too hard, but I don't think so. At least, not right now.

And then there's those stupid photo-fairies...

[Mark Sawyer]

(okay, maybe I'm thinking about this too much...)

So, is there any value, any validity in trying to capture some trace of the ethereal in photography? By its very nature, it seems a losing proposition... We really have no physical scientific evidence of anything metaphysical, be it God or magic or an afterlife or anything spiritual. And we're not going to get any real answers from any guru or book or artwork or nature. So why try?

Since so much of the world believes in religion, maybe it's just some inate, nonsensical condition of the human psyche; it's comforting to think there's more to the universe, that after death we don't just wink out of existence. Or maybe in art/photography some of us become to ambitious in our work, trying to tackle the grandest ideas which we don't, can't, have any real knowledge about. Maybe this is the crap that sells in the marketplace. Maybe a rock is just a rock.

Does that mean everyone should just not think about it? Ain't gonna be no answers, so don't ask no questions? Minor White, you wasted our time, it's just a stupid picture of a stupid reflection under a stupid window.

There was another story about cutting-edge physics in the paper a few days ago, some new evidence that 70% of the universe is composed of some mysterious "dark matter" that no one can identify. I've been thinking about it and I think I figured out what it is. It's stupidity.

I'll shut up for a while now...

[Oren Grad]

Mark -
I don't think there's anything strange about looking for a little something extra from taking or viewing photographs - pursuit of same is an important reason why I bother with the whole business myself. But when taking or viewing a picture elicits some kind of emotional resonance for me, I don't therefore conclude that I've stumbled on to some Deeper Meaning about the universe. It's a personal and private thing. It's possible (never guaranteed) that I will make some good pictures while I'm in that sort of psychological groove, and if one of those pictures "works" for a viewer, it may be that they respond to some of the same things that I do. On the other hand, their experience of viewing it may be entirely different from mine. So it goes. A rock is a rock, though a particular depiction of a particular rock may elicit all sorts of responses depending on what we bring to it.

Cheers...

[Brian Ellis]

"Where did you hear that story?"

Tillman Crane, who lives near Mr. Caponigro and is a good friend and some-time assistant. .

Maybe the odds of it being a spontaneous event are small Jorge but stranger things have happened and been caught on film.

[Bill_1856]

Caponigro gives a cogent first person account of making "Running Deer" in the Lustrum Press book "Landscape."

[Edward (Halifax,NS)]

"But other people on this forum who eschew such talk (and maybe justifiably so) as meaningless "art-speak" and "psycho-babble" (see the recent Walker Evans thread) respond to his work strongly too."

I enjoy looking at his pictures but as soon as I read any of the accompanying text the effect is lost. The same thing happened after I went to a talk by Freeman Patterson. I can't even look at his pictures now.

[Ellis Vener]

Jorge wrote:

I think even as a set up the print is great because he "saw" the potential photograph.

To which I reply; EXACTLY!