seeing the change since weston shot it/there

[nurvanna]

hello-

first let me state that for over an hour or so i've been reading older posts of similar topics. i didn't see anything specific.

i'm wondering how many people have gone looking for specific locations where he shot some of his images? were you able to find any of these places?

for me it's not so much as to copy the image, however i will take photographs for myself(sort of a personal visual diary). it's mostly to stand in the same location to see the beauty in person. also, i'd like to see how the place has changed over time. i've been to point lobos on a quick trip. i didn't have the time nor the ability to seek out certain photographs he made to see their change. i was too busy shooting what was interesting to myself. it would be nice to see the cypress after all these years - like this photographer did: http://fototapeta.art.pl/2003/wste.php

this topic isn't just about point lobos. there certainly are many locations that he visited that have changed drastically or naturally over time.

any comments greatly appreciated.

thank you for your time.

[Frank Petronio]

I visited Point Lobos but kept tripping over the ropes and fences. I visited Yosemite and saw a tree Weston might have photographed, but I'm not sure. I ate some funky shaped peppers and I have a couple of eggplants and Natilus shells around the house. And I used the Escuadado just a few minutes ago...

The most dramatic change was to Claris. She just passed away last year but my friend visted with her a couple of years ago - still a bohemian til the end.

IMHO, his best work was his latest, done from the road. And it was remarkably post-modern. The brands on the signs may have changed, but its still out there.

[nurvanna]

hello-

thanks for your comments. it's nice to know there are some still interested and have some use of things that were used for photographs.

to my knowledge, charis has not passed away. someone i speak with about once a month that is very close with her stated that she was doing well. we're due for another conversation.

[Frank Petronio]

Opps. You're right, she's still around, which is pretty great.

[Ralph Barker]

Personally, while I appreciate being inspired by the work of the likes of Weson and Adams, and their interpretations of the areas they were fond of photographing, I've never made an attempt to search out specific locations. I think it is far more fruitful to respond to those areas yourself, and find your own scenes that resonate for you.

I'm glad to hear that Claris is still alive and well. She was part of an important era. Wouldn't it be great to chat with her over tea (or, wine) some evening?

[David A. Goldfarb]

There's a spot in Brooklyn that he photographed that I've been tempted to visit with the 8x10" camera, but mainly because it is something that Weston photographed that is familiar to me, but I haven't done it yet. It would have been easier while I still lived in Brooklyn, but I didn't know the photograph at the time.

[paulr]

I photographed that spot in Brooklyn many times ... I used to live a few blocks from there. I couldn't believe it when a few years later I saw Weston had photographed there.

Other than that, having the occasional bell pepper in my salad is about as far as it goes.

[John Z.]

I have taken photographs at Point Lobos many times, and on three occasion have later found that I shot I had taken looked almost exactly like a composition of Edward's. I sometimes think he photographed every square inch of Point Lobos. He certainly knew it beter than anyone; it was pretty much his back yard.

[Chandler]

Frank,

I suggest you do your homework before making yourself appear like an idiot. Not only is Edward's second wife still alive and doing well, you do not even know her name. As Nurvanna pointed out to you her name is Charis. You do photograpers and others who view this forum a disservice with comments such as yours.
As for Point Lobos, it is a wonderful place. One can discover many of the locations where Edward worked if one looks carefully. Unfortunately many of the areas he roamed are off limits now in order to protect the reserve. I would recommend any photographer passing through Carmel stop if for only a few hours. You will come away with a better understanding of what Edward did there and the great photographer he was.

[Frank Petronio]

Chandler,
Still squeamish after Dad photographed you and your pee-pee in the corner?

Frank

[Chandler]

Frank,

You just keep opening your mouth and proving your stupidity. First of all, I am not Chandler Weston. Although I would have considered it an honor to be the son of Edward Weston. And of course, I am sure you didn't know Chandler passed away about 10 years ago or you wouldn't have made such a disgusting comment. Secondly, if you would close your mouth and open your eyes and read a little Weston history, you would learn it was Edward's son Neil, who was the model for all of his father's male nude studies in the 1920's. If you are interested in educating yourself, I suggest Charis' book, "Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston." It is an excellent continuation from where Edward's Daybook leave off. That is ,of course, if you have read the Daybooks. If not, start there. You might learn something about the history of photography.

[paulr]

what's with all the bile, chandler? last i looked the conversation was about point lobos ... no one was attacking you or anyone else. if someone has some information wrong, how about politely telling them?

[Brett]

The internet is a spooky place Chandler ... who knows what's in the ether?

[nurvanna]

actually the topic isn't just about point lobos, however point lobos usually is brought up most.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Funny how these threads almost always get ugly. Chill out Chandler. It was a mistake. We all make them. Don't you?

[austin granger]

If I might bring it back to the begining, I'll offer that if you go to death valley, its fairly easy to find Weston's spots (well, they're not really 'his', but you know what I mean). One particular one that comes to mind is up on Zabriskie Point; head to the left of the overlook and peer down-"Hey, I know that view!"

[Bill_1856]

Are Chandler and Frank the same poster?

[Alec Jones]

Can't get to the Weston sites [little too far from Alabama - besides, the gas is too expensive now], but I'm in the process of doing this for Walker Evans sites in the SE. I got got Edwards, MS 3 days before the hurricane hit. Didn't have time to go on to Vicksburg. That will be another trip.

[Brian Ellis]

I've visited Point Lobos three or four times. A great place to photograph but I don't know about finding the places from which he photographed. Maybe along the shore but everywhere else there are roped-off paths so I don't think you could get to his places even if you could find them.

Without (1) being critical of anyone, or (2) intending to generate any arguments, or (3) start an acrimonious debate (whew, is that enough disclaimers : - )) Weston was the classic modernist, not a post-modernist. It was artists like Weston and their theories, principles, values, etc. that post-modernism was reacting to.

[Frank Petronio]

No, I am not schizophrenic enough (or willing to troll for a really dumb joke) to play Chandler. I do like Brett butting in though - maybe some of the other family members could join the thread?

No worries Brian, but I was refering to Weston's later work as being a postmodern. He was photographing the facades forming classic landscapes and photo opportunities (movie lots, highways, advertising signs, southern mansions in disrepair) with the deadpan irony of a typical 1980s MFA student. That he did it in the late 30s and early 40s (please don't kill me if I don't give the exact dates Chandler...) was the interesting part. And because of this, he went far beyond the other f/64 - West Coast photographers - to have helped usher in modernism and then go on to help subvert it is something very special.

I have many Weston books and have read his Daybooks several times. In the haste of posting I don't always do my research or even check my spelling, which is my fault. But I admire Weston as a photographer very much, and sympathize with his imperfections as well. For an old fart family man to run off to Mexico with a hot commie babe - well, it must have been pretty wild - it would make that Frida Kahlo movie look like a Disney production.

[paulr]

I always saw Weston's late work more as an extension of modernism (some call it late modernism) than as post modernism. He took in a wider sweep, started incorporating contemporary culture, and loosened up his formal grip ... but the work was still strongly formal. He was really starting to overlap much more with Walker Evans, who arrived at a similar spot but started out with more pure documentary goals. Robert Adams continued the tradition even farther in some respects, but I have yet to hear him called a post modernist.

Not that po mo has a clear definition that anyone can agree on, but it tends to be concept-oriented art that comments through appropriation and deconstruction. Po mo artists like to challenge any existing precepts (form, craft, differences between pop and high culture, various ideas of how meaning can be created by a work, etc.) without doing anything uncool like offering alternatives.

Another quality of postmodern art is that any attempt to describe it (like this one) will be met with strong disagreement by at least someone (or maybe that person will appear to agree, leaving us all wondering if the gesture is merely ironic).

[Mark Sawyer]

"...any attempt to describe it (like this one) will be met with strong disagreement by at least someone (or maybe that person will appear to agree, leaving us all wondering if the gesture is merely ironic)."

It isn't hard not to disagree with that, Paul. (Sorry, it's the post modernist in me...)

I think we're in the unnamed, undefined post-Post-Modern period now, and your tentative description nails it as well as any I've seen. Maybe add cynicism and superiority to the mix.

Robert Adams uses what is by now a very traditional aesthetic (does it get more traditional than straight formal b/w photography?), but he achieves high-popular/critical success doing it. I do admire his work. It has an eloquence and lack of cynicism that place it outside current art-world trends. The Harvard Business Review has announced the MFA is the new MBA. Perhaps a Ph.D. in English Literature is the new MFA? Could be worse...

[Brian C. Miller]

Oh, no. Another one whose snap shots are shown in galleries.

Robert Adams = William Eggleston.

*sigh*

I am absolutely convinced now that I am not missing anything by not knowing the photographers who are currently held in high regard. I get more artistic information from looking at Chinese or Japanese paintings than any modern photographer.

I suppose this is the effect of photographic nihilism. "Passionate commitment, be it to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Enter nihilism." All values are equal, because there are no values.

[Paddy Quinn]

If you are looking for "artistic information" in such work, I can see that would be a problem.

However, art isn't about seeking or finding "artistic information". Perhaps if you can get over that, you will be able to see and experience more of what the art is about.

[Brian C. Miller]

Paddy, I really don't think that art is about what it used to be about.

Art used to be specifically based on excellence of a skill, like the art of polemics, or the art of war, or the art of weaving nice baskets. What excellence of skill is there in Robert Adam's photographs?

Artworks used to have a subject. Where is the subject in those photographs? Where is the meaning? What is he trying to convey?

All of this always reminds me the story of the Emporer's new clothes, and of tulip trading in Holland with its subsequent crash. (The Tulip Crash happened in 24 hours, btw) Everybody runs around applying value on something which really does not have any value. How much monetary value do flowers really have? Does game theory apply to invisible clothes?

I remember when 60 Minutes ran two shows about modern art. One was positive, the other was negative. The positive one featured a couple who had been collecting for years, mainly buying artworks while the artists were completely unknown. The negative article asked the obvious question: "what the **** do all of you think you're up to?" Its like a shell game, but there is no pea under any of the shells because its been deliberately thrown away by all involved, yet the shells keep being moved about as if there is a pea.

No, I don't see the emporer's clothes, because he's stark naked!

"And they call him The Streak

Fastest thing on two feet

And he ain't wearin' no clothes!

(Naked as a blue jay!)"

-- Johnathan Winters, "The Streak"

[Paddy Quinn]

"Art used to be specifically based on excellence of a skill, like the art of polemics, or the art of war, or the art of weaving nice baskets. What excellence of skill is there in Robert Adam's photographs?"

Sounds like you are talking about crafts and skills, not art.

"Artworks used to have a subject. Where is the subject in those photographs? Where is the meaning? What is he trying to convey?"

you don't think the vast "tractization" of the west (indeed the country) is a subject? a valid subject? or a suitable subject for art? Because it's not pretty? As for what he is conveying - well, on most levels that's pretty obvious, surely.

What is the meaning of Turner's painting of Chichester Canal say? What exactly is he trying to convey

Your first statement above is, imo, a fairly skewed and odd view of what art is and has been for at least the last couple of hundred years, and in many cases, long before that. It doesn't suprise me that you seem to have a problem with any art produced after about 1910.

[Mark Sawyer]

Brian- I think Paddy's right about your confusing craft with art; there is a fundamental difference between the artisan and the artist.

"I am absolutely convinced now that I am not missing anything by not knowing the photographers who are currently held in high regard."

I wonder sometimes if we haven't wandered too much in the direction of artists working for the appreciation of other artists. It may well be that much "high art" is inaccessible without some background, or simply an acquired taste. But at some point, you might consider that the art world, from John Szarkowski and Robert Adams to some of the people on this forum, are not just trying to put one over on you. The people who curate the museums, collect the photographs, write the criticisms, devote their lives and hearts and intellects, may be in on something you're not.

Not to say that you must pursue that direction. If there is more for you in Oriental paintings than modern photography, then by all means, draw from them. Consider the work of pictorialists and the Photo Secession, who were also influence by Japanese arts. It may well lead you to a body of work of as much "value" as anything out there today. Find what influences speak to you.

Personally, I find Robert Adams' work eloquent, well-crafted, thoughtful, and rewarding. After so long a period of photographers photographing things "not for what they are, but for what else they are," I find an honesty in his simple, yet very literate, photographing of things for what they actually are.

[Brian C. Miller]

"What is the meaning of Turner's painting of Chichester Canal (http://www.abcgallery.com/T/turner/turner11.html) say? What exactly is he trying to convey"
It's a very nice scenic composition. Pleasant, and relaxing. Makes me want to take off right now and lie on a quiet river bank with a good book.

"you don't think the vast "tractization" of the west (indeed the country) is a subject? a valid subject? or a suitable subject for art?"
Is it something that you actually want on your wall and look at day after day? Are you sure that its not photojournalism? Jan Brueghel's Satire on Tulip Mania (http://www.franshalsmuseum.collectionconnection.nl/WDL/tour.aspx?t=w:%20bloemen%20en%20bloemengekte&p=os%2075-699&lang=english&versie=adults) is what I would consider to be an opinion piece. While it is artwork, I would not hang it on the wall. What I would hang on the wall would be something that uplifts the spirit, whether it is pretty or not.

What difference is there between what Robert Adams does and what an amateur photographer might do? I'm not talking about Grandma with the point and shoot haphazardly trying to photograph the family, I'm talking about somebody who knows the basics of how to work the camera and a bit of composition and is meandering around just photographing stuff. The perspective is from someone standing up, maybe using a 35mm camera and a 50mm lens. Just wandering around snapping a pic of this or that.

Mark, as for "aquired taste" and such, that reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit where a family had an aquired taste things like grossly sour milk or a chair that hurt the person sitting on it. What is the sense of that? I would rather follow (relatively speaking) in the footsteps of Arthur Fellig (Weegee the Magnificent) than 99% of the modern "master" photographers. Instead of pursuing the obscure and inscrutable, why not persue that which will make the viewer stand up with eyes open wide?


Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art.

There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man's work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).

Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?

[Paddy Quinn]

" "you don't think the vast "tractization" of the west (indeed the country) is a subject? a valid subject? or a suitable subject for art?"
Is it something that you actually want on your wall and look at day after day? Are you sure that its not photojournalism? Jan Brueghel's Satire on Tulip Mania is what I would consider to be an opinion piece. While it is artwork, I would not hang it on the wall. What I would hang on the wall would be something that uplifts the spirit, whether it is pretty or not."

Was Goyoa's work journalism not art? To reduce art merely to that which uplifts the spirits and looks nice hanging on the wall is to both dismiss large sections of art - painting, drawign, sculpture, writing etc from the last several hundred years or more and also to reduce it to "art that matches your setee" - a second major dis-service.

That seems terribly narrow, limiting and ultimately necrotic

Didn't Tolstoy have had problems with Kandinsky? - personally I'd rather have a Kandisnky on my wall than a first edition of Hadji Murad on my shelf - I think I'd find the former much more uplifitng

Of course you have every right to know what you like and like what you know and to enjoiy that, but to dismiss such a significant part of western art from across many periods seems in the end to be something a crippling of both spirit and imagination

[tim atherton]

Is it something that you actually want on your wall and look at day after day? Are you sure that its not photojournalism? Jan Brueghel's Satire on Tulip Mania is what I would consider to be an opinion piece. While it is artwork, I would not hang it on the wall. What I would hang on the wall would be something that uplifts the spirit, whether it is pretty or not.

what about Titus Andronicus? What would that be? Great art has always been more than merely uplifitng (if uplifitng is what you want, try going to church) - and oft time uplifting wasn't what it was at all.

This seems like an awfully narrow view of art and what it is?

[Mark Sawyer]

"Mark, as for "aquired taste" and such, that reminds me of a Saturday Night Live skit where a family had an aquired taste things like grossly sour milk or a chair that hurt the person sitting on it. What is the sense of that? I would rather follow (relatively speaking) in the footsteps of Arthur Fellig (Weegee the Magnificent) than 99% of the modern "master" photographers. Instead of pursuing the obscure and inscrutable, why not persue that which will make the viewer stand up with eyes open wide? "

Brian- Adams has published more than twenty books, has a long exhibition record in some very impressive galleries, etc. etc., and is considered by most in the photographic "art world" to be a noteworthy modern photographer. While you certainly have every right to ignore or argue against his work, at some point you should acknowledge that, or at least start to wonder if, while his work may hold nothing for you, it holds something real and significant for others who react honestly and positively to his work. We're not just gulping sour milk for comedic effect, (I hope... )

But WeeGee/Fellig was a great photographer too. By all means, let him open your eyes, inspire your work... but don't bog yourself down in frustrated attacks on what you don't like. While it's good to argue aesthetics and criticism, I think this is just a spot where we won't influence or educate each others' positions very much.

[Brian C. Miller]

Wow! You guys go all over the place, don't you? :-) Poor Robert Adams (http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adamsr/adamsr.html) gets ignored completely, and the "argument" shifts over to paintings and even plays.

Paddy, I'm not suprised that Tolstoy didn't like Wassily Kadinsky (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/). Autumn in Bavaria looks OK, but I don't care for his improvisations and compositions. If you like Kadinsky, perhaps you might also enjoy Schönberg's atonal 12-tone compositions.

Tim, isn't defending Robert Adams' work by bringing up Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus a bit far off the mark? I can't even see a straw man argument here.

Mark, are you confusing Robert Adams with Ansel Adams? If one wall was Robert's photos and the other wall was Ansel's, would you confuse the two? One favors the dramatic, the other favors the bland and banal. I haven't read Robert's books, but the titles and reviews look interesting. I'll see what the public library has in it.

[Mark Sawyer]

"Mark, are you confusing Robert Adams with Ansel Adams?"

Only when I drink Samuel Adams! Nope, I was writing about Robert Adams; he's quite prolific, but works less exactingly perfect than Ansel Adams. I like both their work.

I don't think of Robert Adams' imagery as "bland and banal," but more quiet and contemplative. AA's work often seems like it should be unveiled from behind a red velvet curtain with a clash of cymbals followed by a big "TAA-DAAA!!!" Weegee's high-society photos might deserve more of a rim-shot on the drums. For viewing RA's work, maybe something from "A Prairie Home Companion," which some also find bland and banal...

Robert Adams has a little book of photographs of cottonwood trees, called simply, "Cottonwoods." It's a good introduction to his work, and has an interview which covers what he's trying to do and thinking about in his own words. Very inexpensive at amazon.com, ($0.97, plus shipping). Worth the risk...

[Brian C. Miller]

Mark, I lived in St. Paul when Garrison Kiellor was the local public radio host (1980?). And during that time I worked on a truck farm which had a 1948 International Harvester tractor, which saw daily use. I did "bean walking," too. So when it comes to knowing some places that time forgot, I've met one or two! :-)

My view of "quiet and contemplative" would be like the Japanese Zen paintings. Or something that you can simply look at and know that its supposed to be quiet-like, like leaf and clouds. With RA, I don't know what the subject is supposed to be. There is no impact. They really look like somebody who has just picked up a camera, and is photographing things because its neat to photograph anything at all.