I'm sorry, I don't have any bovine experience, but I do deal with my two horses. Equine excrement is my never ending job.
So perhaps that's why I turn to photography - a vacation from my job?
Since I deal with HS everyday, it gets me thinking perhaps HS seeps into my vocabulary, my soul, my PHOTOGRAPHY!
This will take a lot of time, but this may prove to be a pivotal moment in my photography, perhaps I must re-examine a life-time of photography to see how deeply HS excretes itself throughout my work?
How many artists are really after the truth? Mother Theresa and a few monks have sworn off the curse of Narcissus, the pursuit of material wealth, the quest for fame and adulation,............and it's people like these that have found the truth. They've done it without sanctimony, because that's part of the bullshit, pure 100% pasteurized bullshit, this idea somehow that artists have as their agenda the pursuit of the truth, you cannot point out the truth to anybody else, show it to anybody else, ........................................in fact most of the time you really can't be sure if the message the artists work is sending is the same message you're receiving.
Art is in a sense bullshit, though I'd rather call it alchemy/magic, yes magic, which is really trap doors and 'slight of hand' and 'trickery' which is artistry when it's well done, smoke and mirrors being used to create an illusion that may or may not remind you of something else, but there cannot be a discussion using words to illuminate what a picture does or doesn't say...............................................................................................what if for a number of years, you think you've gotten the message/some kind of truth/the essence of what an image had to say, and years later the artist says he didn't mean to say that at all, can't figure out how you can see what you're seeing in his image? What's a great image that was accomplished by accident? What about something great in an image that the creator didn't even notice was in the frame(that somebody else sees and proclaims as great insight as to the mysteries of existence by the artist)?
There are only pictures that you never get tired of looking at, and the rest, there's no way to really know if you're seeing what the artist meant you to see(as if that made any difference), the only truth is what you get out of the art for yourself, which doesn't apply to anybody else particularly the creator of the work.
And there's personal bullshit, nobody answered my first post, I'd be curious as to how many folks talking about all this truth, would choose truth, at the expense of quite a bit of money and fame, by telling someone who's looking at their work, that the shot they're appreciating as a masterpiece is really in the artiss mind a piece of shit?
I'm dead serious about my photography, I don't drink when I shoot, I've been to Carnival several times, I shoot the film I've alotted myself for any particular day when I'm there for Carnival, and then I quit shooting.
One particular day I was quite a ways from the hotel, had the camera w/me with a couple of unexposed frames, but I was done shooting as far as I was concerned, I ended up at an outdoors restaurant until very late that night, and partied w/gusto w/some friends, waking up at the hotel the next morning, I took my film out of that camera, the last two frames were exposed, I had taken two shots that I didn't remember, and one of them is on my website, and it's one of the better ones. I've had people ask me questions about it, tell me that they get this or that value from the picture, when the truth is that the picture was a happy accident that wasn't supposed to happen, that I don't even remember taking.
Whether it's me or somebody else going into a bullshit/'after the fact' and made up story about how you agree w/somebodies comment that you intended this or that, is no big deal with me, that's part of art, regarding the accidental picture I talked about, I just don't say anything and let the folks talk about the image, but respectfully I think part of the bullshit is the idea that somehow artistry is loftier than it really is, most people are struggling to get a good picture, when they get a really good one, sometimes it comes by accident, having nothing to do w/what the artist was trying to do, this is why Elephants can make good money as painters.
The bullshit is the artist conceit, that for him/her, the most important part of the story is the artist telling it, .................instead of what the receiver gets out of it.
A well made masterpiece by the Shakers/furniture as functioning art, is a real object as well as a 'work of art', and is as close to the truth as any photograph, you even touch it and use it, which you cannot do w/the content of a photograph.
I think a lot are ... but this question addresses the message, while the original topic was more about the medium--the building blocks used to craft the message. Artists may be after truth with a capital T, in the sense of meaning, or not. But when I ask about photographic truth, I'm refering to something a bit more mundane: the everyday truth of verifiable facts. The message of a straight photograph, like one of Weston's peppers, might concern itself unverifiable issues of spirituality and personal convictions. But the medium conveys this message through a photographic sense of concrete, inarguable fact: a pepper, simply described, almost more real than if it were real.
There's a tension inherent in this expressed by Weston himself when he described it as "a pepper, but more than a pepper," and by Minor White who said that he photographs "what's there, and also what else is there." It's the idea that objective reality is a kind of launching pad for the metaphor, but also a kind of anchor--if we lose sight of it, the metaphor risks flying off into irrelevent obscurity, or burning up like Icarus.
The photographic truth--the grounding in a sense of reality--gives the metaphor strength. As Struan said, "They derive their power from the viewer's assumption that they show something that really existed. " If for whatever reason we lose faith that the thing actually existed--the pepper, the war crime, the woman flying--then the image instantly loses some of its power to move us. It loses its photographic power.
"And there's personal bullshit, nobody answered my first post, I'd be curious as to how many folks talking about all this truth, would choose truth, at the expense of quite a bit of money and fame ..."
it's an interesting question, but not at all connected to photographic truth or photographic bullshit. you could pose the same question to a shoe salesman.
"The bullshit is the artist conceit, that for him/her, the most important part of the story is the artist telling it ..."
you don't have to be an artist to believe your own hype! but i bet believing your own hype helps with the decision to become an artist ...
Yes, but you've got know your part in the bullshit, before you can say anything about anybody else, but still my question hasn't been answered, so I would pose the question to you Paul, suppose that someone is looking over your work, finds a shot you accidently left out that you consider a piece shit that they instantly proclaim as a masterpiece, they want it on a magazine cover, which might lead to considerable fame, would what you tell him.
Other folks likes shoe salesman are into the hype, of course, agreed, but I'm talking about artists, and if fact, that's exactly my point, that they think they have more of an excuse.
At bedtime, my kids ask for me to tell them a story, or to 'put on a show' w/their Teddy Bears, if I can make them laugh, and go to bed w/a smile on their faces, then what I did was a success, and that more important than me being satisfied at what I did, you can pursue art as some kind of pursuit of the truth, but ultimately it's entertainment/inspiration and the enrichment of our lives, not just the ego of the artist, I can appreciate the hard work ethic of a good shoe salesman, even though he doesn't produce what he sells, an artist does,
You can't talk about the truth, or bullshit, if you can't apply it to yourself as well as to others, and there may be some shoe salesman on this forum who also happen to be photographers, so I can still ask that question of you or of them, would you throw away the chance of a lifetime/a golden opportunity, to tell the truth, if you can't/won't answer that, then what are we talking about?
"Truth" is how a photograph or other work of art makes you feel in your gut. Bullshit (or Elephant Shit, as Perls would say) is what you explain to yourself or others about what the photograph or art means or says (or is supposed to mean or say). That's how I see it. Great post paul.
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