Discussion of the Mundane

[patapuss]

My current series New Hallucinations represents a conscious departure from the habitual nature of daily commutes by giving notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces. The series consists of 15 large format images that are digitally printed and hung on a gallery wall. Supplementing the installation is a self-published newsprint publication consisting of 15 images (two of which overlap with the installation). There is also a website (in progress) with two viewing galleries, one for each aspect of the project. Details aside, the series brings into question the ways in which we experience (document) the world and the qualities we ascribe to "fine art". How do you feel mundane images work within this context? What images have you taken of mundane things? Who are the photographers working in this vein that you respect? What is "fine art"?

http://www.newhallucinations.com

[kev curry]

Why would anyone want to give ''notice to the minute details of often overlooked spaces'' like traffic cones and power lines and garbage bins etc etc? People routinely filter out the monotony of everyday 'things' like these for good reason I suspect; they hold little interest or value. I can put these things into an definite environmental, political and social context but I don't think thats your intention here.

[patapuss]

IMO, an image of a tree that is littered with trash is much more interesting conceptually and visually than a serene landscape of Pictorialist influenced nature. Likewise, looking at an image of orange traffic cones, garbage bins, or telephone poles challenges the viewer to reconsider personal bias in favor of a more liberal interpretation of "fine art". When confronted with images that are mundane in nature, the viewer has a cerebral experience and is forced to consider the importance (implications) of each image. My images do fit within an environmental/political/social context. Although my artist statement does not provide such a link, it is impossible to take a series of photographs without them fitting into this paradigm. The artist statement provides a link between process and imagery not political context and imagery: that is for you to decide. Each viewer has a different perspective and will read into an image in a unique manner, thus it would be brash of an artist to overtly state what social/political/environmental context in which an image lies.
On another note, why would anyone want to give notice to anything? IMO, an image that requires the viewer to think about why it has been made while simultaneously exuding an air of technical competence (in regard to composition, exposure, use of light etc. etc.) is more successful than an image of pure aesthetic beauty. Within the context of this series, anything no matter how insignificant it may appear has the potential to be important. What makes a picture of one's mother or favorite range of mountains more important than a picture of a stranger or a telephone pole? Sentimental value. As previously stated, this series negates such biases.

[Jay DeFehr]

The commute is a common modern ritual with some interesting aspects related to documentary photography. The commute commits the commuter to a familiar route, usually at two time periods (going and returning) within a small time window, creating distinct lighting patterns, with seasonal variations. Some commuters have the luxury of public transportation, so their time commuting can be spent in any number of ways that don't involve constant visual contact with the commute route, but for those who walk, bike, drive, etc, visual contact is mandatory. We humans are endowed with powerful pattern recognition capabilities, one consequence of which is that we're always finding compositions in the stream of visual data we process. If we also happen to carry a camera, as more and more people do, it's quite common to record those compositions. My point is there's nothing more ordinary than making photos of ordinary things one finds along one's commute. The most interesting (for me) aspect of your project is that you feel your experience is somehow unique, and your images are somehow more than documents of ordinary things found on a commute. Did you do any research into other projects like yours? I've seen innumerable sets of images made while commuting, because making pictures is a natural human activity, and commuting provides a set of constraints within which to organize a set of images. This is all a very longwinded way of saying I don't think there's anything very special about your approach, and your images are just what I would expect to see in a group of images made while commuting.

I have many similarly ordinary images made while walking to and from Julia's workplace. Typically I will load a camera I want to test, or film I want to test, or some other condition I want to test, and out I go, looking for compositions in the data stream. I try to quiet my verbal mind and concentrate on seeing and visual metaphor. It's good exercise, and I'm often surprised at the patterns I find. One pattern I found was an inside-out metaphor; things that belong inside, found outside. Chairs and sofas and TV sets found in yards and on street corners, under trees in gardens. Another was people working. We recognize when a person is working, as opposed to acting freely, and the commute is a transitional phase. I find these patterns and metaphors interesting, but ordinary, and I don't expect anyone else to share my interest, and I don't claim to be making fine art; I'm just doing what people do.

[patapuss]

This is all a very longwinded way of saying I don't think there's anything very special about your approach, and your images are just what I would expect to see in a group of images made while commuting.

I find these patterns and metaphors interesting, but ordinary, and I don't expect anyone else to share my interest, and I don't claim to be making fine art; I'm just doing what people do.

I do not claim to be the sole photographer who is interested in ordinary things encountered on a commute. Robert Frank paved the way, William Eggleston set the tune to color, Stephen Shore combined their practices, and Amy Stein took it to an extreme. Many photographers have incorporated the idea of travel or commute as a device. My project is just one in a long list of photographs made under these constraints. That being said, just because it has been done will not stop me from making and presenting images. If we could no longer explore a certain technique or device because it has already been used, nobody could make anything new at this point.

Who is to say that what you (people) do is not art? If you like to take walks while testing your equipment and you do it with some regularity, eventually you will have a set of images that work in harmony with one another. Just because they were made under a time tested approach should not detract you from investigating what is being conveyed by the imagery. You said that you notice things outside that belong inside, why not pursue that as a photographic series? There is no authoritarian deity who stops you from photographing and presenting the images you want to make; likewise, there is no authoritarian power deeming what is and is not art. And yes, my images are just what one would expect to see in a group of images made while commuting, that is the point. Anything can be made into art. Life is art!

Roland Barthes once said, "…the photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes 'surprising' when we do not know why it has been taken; what motive and what interest is there in photographing a backlighted nude in a doorway, the front of an old car in the grass, a freighter at the dock, two benches in the field, a woman’s buttocks at a farmhouse window, an egg on a naked belly (photographs awarded prizes at a contest for amateurs)? In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it declares the notable whatever it photographs. The 'anything whatever' then becomes the sophisticated acme of value." This is one of my favorite quotes and the impetus for creating the series I did.

[jp]

Me visiting the website, the images were unnaturally larger than my screen the way they were displayed and I could not determine the composition. If I right clicked and viewed image, it displayed fine. As such, I didn't get a good feel for your exhibit.

I think perceiving the ordinary like you are doing is both a creative and iterative activity. Creative in how you share what you see; iterative, in that you don't notice everything the first time through.

You compared the tree trash scene with a pictorialist landscape and what is considered more interesting (and implied one is different artistically). It's not a new comparison. I like pictorialist scenes as a means of understanding light and composition; good soft pictorialist photography is far more challenging than good-enough straight photography. I don't make blanket statements that one style is better than the other as a whole. The prerequisite for a quality scene/subject was thrown out by Stieglitz's equivalents series. The sky was something everyone has access to and what images resulted were more a reflection of the artistic creativity of the person with the camera, rather than having better/special/exclusive subject matter. We don't look up any more for some reason, so if you can make creative photos of scenery everyone has access to, then that's a valid way to hone creativity.

Regarding iterative... I like to take walks with my camera. I know someone else who walks a rural hill every single day and just by being there gets better photos that most because he's there for the situations. He also gets better photos because people discuss with him what they like or don't like about scenes and he'll go and try to improve upon earlier work. It's not just photos that are improved by revisiting. I think of Thoreau writing about going for walks. He did it every day and got more and more perceptive and thoughtful and expressive of his surroundings by his repetitive walks. He wouldn't have been a good nature/thought writer if he was a wanna-be walker.

[Jay DeFehr]

In your above post you talk about challenging the viewer to reconsider personal bias, and that is what I challenge you to do. Photography is no longer the medium about which Barthes wrote in Camera Lucida, and your quote might have seemed forward looking in the 1920s, but in the context of the 21st century it is naive, and photographing the ordinary in an attempt to elevate it to the status of fine art is as cliched as any of Barthe's examples.

I'm not saying what you've done is not art; I'm saying it's what people do. Darwin called human language ability "An instinctive tendency to acquire an art", and I think the same principle applies to picture making. How does your sample of images differ importantly from any other random sampling of images? If your answer is that your images are of mundane subjects, I'd argue that's not a difference. If you answer that your images are made with LF equipment, I'd argue that's not an important difference. If you answer that your treatment of your subject matter is unique in some way, I'd ask you to explain how it's unique. If, as you say, "anything can be made into art", what is the process? If, as you say, "Life is art!", why does yours deserve special attention?

[dperez]

I don't think you need an artist's statement for your New Hallucinations work. I think while it all makes sense to you, it might be best to let the viewer figure things out for themselves.

Sometimes the story behind an image or a set of images can strengthen a presentation and the viewers understanding. But in your case, I find your words more of a distraction.

Also, it seems to me it is impossible not to have some kind of bias. You exert bias and judgment in your selection; why did you select this viewpoint over that one, this subject over another--it is your own bias at work. All you are presenting in your New Hallucinations work is a different bias, not a selection free of such subjective processes.

Often what we don’t choose to photograph helps to shed light on our own bias or set of biases. Maybe the challenge is to find a different bias from which to view the world.

As to the idea of the mundane, many people think that Andreas Gursky’s The Rhine II is mundane. I like the idea of trying to challenge popular notions of what is mundane, and maybe trying to show the inherent beauty in scenes that most would overlook, ignore, or ridicule. But I’m not sure we as artists need to spend too much time talking about it.

Respectfully,

-Daniel

[frotog]

Regarding the comparison to photo pictorialism...
This sort of seemingly random sampling of images has been prevalent in the art schools long enough to have established itself as a kind of new pictorialism. And like the pictorialists, its practitioners are just as insistent in making sure people know that it's art. There are even some successful contemporary artists who are still getting milk from this cow, usually by insisting that they are extending the tradition or putting a process-based spin on it. The problem, as Jay noted, is that this strategy is a well-worn conceit by now. This in itself would not be a deal breaker if the visual imagery were fresh. But these images are full of visual tropes that are not new...or random...or even mundane (or "Mundane" with a capital "M" as opposed to the commonplace mundane that us mere sublunary people experience when we're not in the thrall of an old-fashioned transcendent, high-art experience). Maybe you should start looking for the supramundane? Or change course and go after the fantastic?

[Brian C. Miller]

Mundane: the common, the ordinary. Banal. "The cat sat on the mat."

Quentin Crisp, in The Naked Civil Servant (hillarious recording), railed against the banal in education. Something is needed to inspire children to read! In Argentina, the first words taught to children are, "I love Evita!" Thus, they are inspired to read.

All that said, I've been making a lot of photographs of the mundane and banal. I've been biking around Everett, photographing what I see in alleys. The bits, the pieces, what's overgrown or odd. There isn't much brand new and shiny here. I use a Holga because it weighs 8oz, and I don't care if it bumps repeatedly against my bicycle as I ride. I've posted a few of the shots in the Lounge thread. I've posted a few shots with my Super Graphic in the images section.

I don't consider when I do that to be making fine art. Fine art, at one time, meant that somebody put a lot of effort into something to make it beautiful and uplifting, or telling a story, or something like that. A still life was something complex, which required time to contemplate it. The viewer, at a minimum, would come away with at least respect for the artist's skill.

Albrecht Dürer, The Great Piece of Turf, 1503, is an example of banal fine art. Yes, it's a bunch of grass. It is finely and skillfuly rendered, but if one of us photographed a scene exactly like that, everybody would wonder, "Why?" There's no skill involved in snapping some grass. How much skill is involved in replicating Jan Breughel the Elder, Bouquet, 1603, in a photograph? These things in a photograph just don't get no respect.

There are very few people I respect who have made mundane photographs, and all of them worked for news agencies or newspapers. Arthur Fellig, "Weegee the Famous," is one such person. But it's not just photographing the mundane, it's photographing people as they are people, going about their everyday mundane lives. I don't think that Fellig made one photograph that didn't have a person in it. The images by Walker Evans are also about people. While a nautilus shell may be banal, it is said of Weston's photograph that it has a "luminosity" to it. I don't think that a contemporary photograph of a shell would merit an auction price of $1 million, though.