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.

[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.