The Narrative of your artistic life...?

[John Kasaian]

Here's a concept: We write the narrative of our own artistic, "photographic" life, maybe with pen and ink or maybe with negatives and prints. Far beyond questions like "Is it art?" or "Is it good/bad/worthwhile or indifferent art?" is the question of how accurate is this narrative we're writing and more importantly is your photographic life's narrative an honest portrait of yourself? Or is it something less charitable?

I'm shooting vodka and drinking beer with my russian friends, contemplating those pictures of cave drawings from France, speculating on what these drawings represent. What they represent, I've concluded, is the cave man (or cave woman) who drew them, which led me to ponder this question.

Pardon me, I'm getting a head-ache (we didn't have any really good vodka on hand tonight)

[Vaughn]

Not to answer your pondering very deeply, one still needs to ask the question what did a photographer shows the world compared to what s/he has hidden away in her/his proof sheets?

Photographers rarely show their mistakes or images that might be embarassing. So while what a photographers edits in to show the world helps to define who that person is, it is an incomplete definition since we do know what they editied out.

[paulr]

It's a question you might put to the people who know you best. How much of you do they see in your work. What do they miss?

Beyond this it can be a complicated question. Sometimes an artists's work is a direct expression of themselves, sometimes it's almost an antithesis. The most scattered, coarse people sometimes produce the most formally elegant work. People trapped in their lives sometimes produce the most whimsical, fantastic, surreal images.

This isn't to contradict your original idea; just to suggest that an honest portrait can include more than what's there. It might be all about what isn't there.

[John Kasaian]

Good point (ouch!---that vodka!) What a photographer deems a mistake, or at any rate something less than representative of what they are capable of seems to me to be like vetting a manuscript but I'm not sure how that would detract from the narrative. We all make mistakes and hopefully overcome them but we have to recognize them first. While recognizing and correcting errors are part of an artist's narrative they aren't likely to be included in the "finished" product anymore than discarded chapters from a novel---but then discarded chapters are the ones that detract more from the story than add to it, which is why they were deleted in the first place.

Maybe what I'm concerned with is a false narrative---the denial of something real, like a struggle. Sometimes when reading Edward Weston's Day Books I am taken with stories of obstacles that were overcome. Maybe these things don't show up in Weston's photographs (maybe they do) but they were very much a part of Edward Weston (I'm guessing here--I never met E.W.) so very much a part of the narrative Weston "wrote" of His artistic life. The opposite would be someone who "borrows" the vision of others and them complains bitterly of not getting recognition for originality. Comparing the two narratives, Weston looks like an artist while the other looks like a clown.

It makes me think about my own photographic "narrative." It's just a simple collection of negatives and prints stuffed in a filling cabinet at present (and thats likely all that it ever will be) but it still tells a story. What I'm wondering about is, just what does the story say?

I've never had any photographer ancestors (aside from the family snapshots) but I think it would be interesting to be able to look at a body of photographic work left by someone (yes, the mistakes too if they haven't been trashed) and contemplate what it all says.

BTW, is it true saltpeter and caviar will cure a vodka hangover?

[Maris Rusis]

When at last all the photographs are gathered up and there are no to be done it is indeed slim baggage for a journey into eternity.

Photographers are lucky however because most folks travel thence accompanied by no more than the recollections of their relatives for a generation or two.

[paulr]

John, there's a beautiful essay by Robert Adams titled "Edward Weston: the Biography I'd Like to Read." It deals with a lot of these ideas; certainly the ones you mention about Weston.

Have you seen it?

[Greg Lockrey]

I get a real hoot of what people "read" into my art. :) :eek: :D

[Steven Barall]

Considering that photography is completely subjective you sort of have to agree that everything you do is completely a portrait of yourself. Whether your photos are (if possible) original or overt copies of other photographer's work you are in fact creating an accurate portrait of yourself. You might not like how people perceive your photos (and your ego) but like it or not they are your photos, made by you for your purposes and a reliable reflection of your world.

The great thing about photography is how perfectly subjective the whole process is. The film starts your blank just like a canvas or a sheet of paper does. Photography is just such a perfect tool.

[Michael Graves]

Define "art". Back when I was in the military, I pulled a sheet of exposed and developed -- but unfixed paper out of the trash in the darkroom. The sabattier effect on the paper gave it some interesting opalescent effects and some of the tones were reversed, while others weren't. I washed it, dry mounted it and entered it in the base photo competion. It took second place.

Once man's trash......

[Ole Tjugen]

"Good vodka" has both Cyrillic and Latin letters on the label - in other words it's a Russian vodka produced for export.

and that's all I'm going to say on the subject of Art.

[Michael Graves]

Yeah????

Good Cognac beat excellent vodka any day.


"Good vodka" has both Cyrillic and Latin letters on the label - in other words it's a Russian vodka produced for export.

and that's all I'm going to say on the subject of Art.

[Colin Graham]

Finally, a hard liquor flame war! :p

[Walter Calahan]

Over the years I've had many friends named Art.

Now what was the question?

[Brian Ellis]

John, there's a beautiful essay by Robert Adams titled "Edward Weston: the Biography I'd Like to Read." It deals with a lot of these ideas; certainly the ones you mention about Weston.

Have you seen it?

Just in case anyone tries to find this essay, I believe the actual title was "The Achievement of Edward Weston: The Biography I'd Like to Read." It's also reprinted simply as "Edward Weston" in Adams' book "Why People Photograph." Sorry if this is repetitive, I haven't read the entire thread.

[paulr]

Just in case anyone tries to find this essay, I believe the actual title was "The Achievement of Edward Weston: The Biography I'd Like to Read." It's also reprinted simply as "Edward Weston" in Adams' book "Why People Photograph." Sorry if this is repetitive, I haven't read the entire thread.

Ah, thanks Brian. That's the one. I have the version by the first title you mention, in a book called EW:100 Centennial Essays in Honor of Edward Weston. A little paperback that's long out of print, but probably easy to snag for a few bucks online. Lots of great essays about the Man.

Here's a passage that I think speaks to John's original idea:

"As a practical matter, it seems to me that the biographer of an artist ought not only to begin with a commitment to use the subject's work as primary evidence, but to remember the nature of Aristotle's argument for its centrality--that it is a unique curative for sickness--and assume that art begins in unhappiness. True, the goal of art is to convey a vision of coherence and peace, but the effort to develop that vision starts in the more common experiences of confusion and pain. Which is to say that if we are to use the artist's work as our evidence about his life, we must, to some degree, turn it around and find the negative that stands behind the positive. If a work shows a beautiful woman or an orderly landscape, the biographer ought to inquire about the nature of the world in which the artist usually felt he lived, the one he struggled to place in a more affirmative perspective.

"What I would really like to know from a biography about Edward Weston--and I hope a major one will be written someday--is where the greatest pictures came from. I think they did not necessarily come from the sometimes foolish man who was a vegetarian but enjoyed bullfights, the one who believed in astrology and wore a velvet cape. They must have come from a more thoughtful person, one who suffered enough to learn."

--Robert Adams

[John Kasaian]

Yeah????

Good Cognac beat excellent vodka any day.

Vodka is useful for mixing drinks, while cognac is limited for those purposes (French 75s come to mind)...but we were drinking straight shots is a series:
1st shot for the hosts
2nd shot for the guests
3rd shot for those who would be here drinking if they were still alive
4th shot for health (I think)
5th shot for uhhh well I forget what that one is for, 6th and 7th shots too.

Note: avoid doing this outdoors in Arizona, where there is lots of cactus(don't ask how I know this)

Good Vodka with a cyrillic label does make a difference! Amazing stuff---much best than the swill I used to clean my 14" Commercial Ektar in the mountains.

[jnantz]

this is kind of funny ..

i learned a few weeks ago of some sort of vodka-snob-ho-down
where the vodka-connaisseurs drank all sorts of vodka cheep and expensive
without knowing what they were drinking.

strangely enough they picked the cheepest of the cheep claiming all sorts of delicious qualities the expensive hooch didn't have ...

i guess the difference is the day after when might have been nursing a hangover
and looking for the 4$ bottle of mr popov for a little of the " hair of the dog ... "
and then realized what they were drinking ...

[paulr]

There was a Mythbusters episode where they tested the theory that a Britta filter could turn cheap vodka into great vodka. They had a blind tasting that included the untouched cheap vodka, some untouched good vodka, and samples of the cheap vodka that had been run through the britta once, twice, three times, four times, etc. etc..

The test pannel included a vodka expert, a self proclaimed martini expert (basically a lush), and someone else (maybe a bartender or chef ... I forget).

The lush couldn't tell anything apart from anything else ... her answers were basically random. The bartender guy could tell the good from the bad. He wasn't fooled into thinking the filtered vodka was good vodka. But amazingly, the vodka expert not only picked the good and the bad vodka, but was able to line up the filtered samples in the exact order of how many times they were filtered ... in other words, he could tell the differences between 3-times filtered crappy vodka and 4-times filtered crappy vodka.

They concluded that filtering makes crappy vodka better, but doesn't make it good.

[Turner Reich]

The daybooks were done already, who is so self important that we would want to hear anything from them? Besides even in the daybooks parts were torn out and burned.

I was in a *** drinking ***** with **** and ******** ***** walked in an pissed off *** ****** who was under the table ******* the ##### to .

The nex t morniing I wa on th e doones agin with my cammmeras and ass who donkey muled and my holders got wet.

I mess my friends in

[David R Munson]

Man....where are the gin drinkers? Anyone else hopelessly devoted to Hendricks?

[John Kasaian]

Man....where are the gin drinkers? Anyone else hopelessly devoted to Hendricks?

Horses for courses. I still have a fondness for Oso Negro, a sweet dutch style gin made in Mexico. Ft Huachuca was well lubricated with gin and tonics made with the stuff :) I haven't found a London dry gin to my liking since the little sailor fell overboard off the Plymouth label :(

[John Kasaian]

Wow, did this thread take an unexpected turn!