A friend of mine recently clued me in on the work of Deborah Parkin. She writes a lovely blog, in which she shares many thoughts about how her life intersects with her photography. 
She's unfailingly honest about the conflict she feels about the time spent on photography vs. the time spent with her young children. This is something all artist/parents wrestle with, I think.
I particularly like the mood in her photographs- they are very evocative. 
Jackie Nickerson has recently published a book titled "Terrain". In it, she depicts laborers on South and East African farms. 
Rather than being straightforward depictions of these people at work, she shows them with the materials of their labor obstructing, at minimum, their faces, and sometimes most of their bodies.
This has the effect of transforming both how we view the workers, as well as the work they do.
These photographs are great examples of how straightforward photographs can be invested with many layers of meaning.
Ira Glass, producer and host of the radio show "This American Life", put together a short video about "The Gap", which any creative person experiences at one point or another. The Gap happens after you've had an idea and a project has been started, but you are now in the middle of it and don't quite know where you are going and how it's going to turn out in the end. This is the point at which you get frustrated and begin to lose faith in what you are doing. Thoughts of quitting arise. Doubt gnaws at your brain. Here's a link to the video.
Right now, I am in The Gap with my current project. And the only way to deal with it, as Glass says, is to just keep going. Keep making work. Keep shooting, processing, printing, questioning. Just keep moving forward.
In past experiences with The Gap, I've discovered that it may last a short time, but it also can last for quite a long time. Regardless of how long it lasts for any given project, one has to have faith that it will all work out and that the end result will be satisfying. And if it isn't, well, then isn't that something we can learn and move on from as a starting point for what we do next?
My most recent posts have touched on some of the technical issues that I've been having with my current project. The question of what camera to use has loomed large, and has gotten me thinking a lot about comfort zones. The questions I have wrestled with are: "Am I too comfortable using the panoramic and/or square format? Would I challenge myself more by using a different format camera?" The answer I have come up with, at least for now, is, "No" to both questions. One of things I love about using the panoramic or square format is that I constantly feel challenged to further explore their possibilities. Rather than feeling predictable, they force me to rethink what I am doing every time I use them. I have never felt that way using 35mm, 6x7 or 4x5 cameras.
But the larger question here is: "Will my work improve if I force myself to work in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable?" My answer to this is: "Yes." I also believe, however, that if I am uncomfortable with everything I am doing, my brain grinds to a halt. What works best for me is to make myself uncomfortable in limited-but-ever-changing ways throughout the course of a project. I've found that throwing only one or two wrenches into the works at any given time does an amazing job at putting me off my stride and forcing me to reconsider what I am doing.
Being uncomfortable is part of the sometimes-painful process of bringing new work to life, because it leads to uncertainty. But I've found that I ultimately grow more creatively when I force uncomfortableness upon myself and that makes that it totally worthwhile. Here's a great article that speaks to this: "The Creative Benefits of Exploring the Uncomfortable".
Because I have been wrestling with what kind of camera to use for my current project, I have also been confronted with the issue of the square vs. the rectangular format. This is not a new phenomenon for me. Back when I was in grad school, I had a lot of trouble trying to find my voice as an artist. At the time, I used 35mm, 6x7, and 4x5 cameras, but never was comfortable with any of them. It wasn't until my father gave me an old panoramic camera that had belonged to my great-grandfather that I began understanding that format can make a huge difference in the kind of work you do. This camera, an Al-Vista Model 5D, took 5" roll film and took a picture with roughly 160˚ angle of view. (I used this camera with cut-down 11" x 14" sheet film exclusively for the Shadowing the Gene Pool series.) From the start, I discovered that the long, slender panoramic format gave me a creative voice that had been missing. There was something about how I could arrange things in space that completely spoke to me, and since that time I have used a variety of panoramic cameras and loved them all. The fact that panoramic images are rectangular isn't lost on me, but I don't seem to be limited by them creatively in the same way that I am by less-long rectangles.
I didn't start using square format cameras until much later, but discovered when I did that they, too, allow me to work with space in a way that allows me to speak with my pictures in a way that the conventional rectangular formats (35mm, 6x7, 4x5) never have. As a beginner, I never realized the powerful impact that an image's shape and dimensions can have on the meaning of a photograph. Now that I do, I choose my tools for any given project with great care.
As I've been working on my current project, I've been thinking a lot about the tools I'm using and the results I have been getting from them. In brief, I have not been happy. I've been using a 35mm DSLR camera and LOVE getting the instant feedback that only a digital camera can give me. Plus, they are high resolution, the color is great, but.... most of the images just don't cut it. Why? Because all photographic equipment and media has a unique "footprint". This footprint is created by a number of factors, including, but not limited to the camera format, the lens used, the aperture used, and whether the camera is uses digital or film for recording the image. In my experience, images shot on film look different than ones shot digitally. I am not talking about resolution or sharpness or even color/grayscale quality here. I am talking about things like the richness and spatial depth that a film image inevitably seems to have that digital doesn't. (At least the images that I take reflect this!)
Don't get me wrong- I would "mortgage a kidney" (as one fellow photographer put it) for a medium format digital camera with a square sensor that rendered an image like my film cameras do. But that camera doesn't exist right now. I realize that I am placing myself in the middle of the film vs. digital debate here, and that many readers will completely disagree with me. But I have no time for that debate- for me it's not an issue of whether film or digital is better. The issue is: What equipment will yield the kind of visual results I want? For now, the answer for me is to use a medium format film camera and scan the resulting negative so that I can print it digitally.
In my last post, I quoted a sentence that was in reference to Seamus Heaney's poems: "He takes the familiar and makes it strange." This sentence describes perfectly what I am trying to do in my current work. Because this is no easy thing, I have been thinking a lot about what it is, exactly, that can make the familiar into something strange or unsettling. In researching this, I came upon this blog entry by Pat Thompson, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. She writes about how de-familiarization is about "seeing things differently, and understanding them differently." The ability to convey to viewers/readers/listeners this different understanding of something familiar is key.
Musicians are challenged by this concept any time they do a cover version of a well-known song. Sometimes they produce a more-or-less faithful rendering of the original, but other times, the cover version causes the listener to hear something in the song that had been previously unknown. I can think of two examples that illustrate this perfectly.
The first is Whitney Houston's "How Will I Know". Her original was a perfect piece of pop confection that speaks to the angst of young women just starting on their journey of negotiating relationships. Her a cappella version, although not a cover version by someone else, reveals the concerns of a grown woman who has already lived a life and experienced failures in love.
The second example is Chris Cornell's cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". There is a gritty, desperate aspect to Cornell's version that was absent for me in the original. I had become complacent about the song until I heard Cornell's version, which caused me to relisten to Jackson's original and rethink what i thought I knew about it. I found far more angst and anger there than I had heard initially.
In both cases, the experience as listener was revelatory, exciting and..... strange. You are familiar with the subject, but because it is being presented to you in a way that is different from the norm, you feel like you don't know it at all. It is this sensation that I am aiming for in the photographs I am creating right now.
Although I believe I am a fairly articulate person, I always seem to stumble when someone asks me what my work is "about", or what kind of artist I am. I inevitably end up using far too many words to answer those questions. In the January/February 2014 issue of Intelligent Life magazine (which is published by the Economist) author Christina Patterson describes how Nobel-prizewinning poet Seamus Heaney used words to create maximum impact. There was a sentence in that article that is the perfect description of what I attempt to do with my work:
"He takes the familiar and makes it strange."
That sums it up perfectly, particularly in regard to the project that I am currently working on. Here's an example of my most recent work-in-progress that I feel effectively does that:
Now I just have to drill that sentence into my head: "I take the familiar and make it strange." and use it whenever I'm asked what kind of work I do. If only I could do that to the degree that Seamus Heaney could!
I'm not completely sure why I keep finding photographs that refer to 15th-to 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting, but they just seem to fall in my lap sometimes. I've already posted about the work of Nina Katchadourian and Hendrik Kerstens, and here is another take on the same idea by Eric Klemm:
They are all clever, beautifully done, eye-catching and thought-provoking. They definitely make me want to try my own hand at it!
Art Photo Index (API) recently published its inaugural show in a new online exhibition series it's launching. Titled "Fear & Loathing", it was curated by Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art. In it, I've discovered the work of Ben Alper.
Although his website doesn't provide any artist's statement that I could find, his interests revolve around the role that photographs play in the recording and archiving of memory. I found this picture particularly compelling:
Many of us have seen something like this in the course of our lives- a page in an old family album that is missing its pictures, with a few informational notations scattered on it. But there is something both poignant and awful about what this photograph suggests - the loss of memory, the loss of the family unit, the loss of family members, the loss of identity, the inevitable and relentless passage of time.
If you give each of 5 different artists the exact same object to use in her/his work, you are guaranteed to get 5 different results. I've always been interested in this idea. Take for example, band-aids. I recently saw this picture by Eric Klemm, which used a lot of band-aids:
What I see in this picture is vulnerability, sadness, a fierce barrier that has been put up between the world and this child. The fact that the application of the band-aids was so deliberate and purposeful makes it the antithesis of playful. They work as a defense against some unseen threat, and imply impending injury of some kind to me.
Compare the use of the band-aids in that photo to one that I took, which is from the "Shadowing the Gene Pool" series:
In this picture, the band-aids serve quite a different purpose. Rather than being a barrier, they are used almost like tattoos, markers of power and strength. The body English of the little girl adds to that effect. They say, "Yes, I am vulnerable, but that's irrelevant."
I'm sure if I searched the Web for "children with band-aids" I would find countless pictures which would use the band-aids to express different things. That's why no photographer should ever shy away from photographing anything. It's not WHAT you photograph, it's HOW you photograph it that will make it fresh and exciting- or not.
Timothy Archibald is another artist I've discovered in Art Photo Index's (API) new online exhibition titled "Fear & Loathing", which was curated by Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Although most of the work on his website is quite humorous in nature (and worth checking out!), Archibald has done a project called Echolilia, a beautifully conceived and executed series of pictures that examines the power and vulnerability of his son Elijah, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of 5. (Echolilia is also available as a book.) Echolilia is the "automatic repetition of words or phrases just spoken by others", and is often a symptom of autism. The New York Times has published an article that goes into more depth about this project.
For me, the following picture is the perfect expression of this exploration of Elijah's world and of the vulnerability that his father Timothy saw in it:
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I read - a lot. I read books of all kinds, magazines, newspapers... pretty much anything I can get my hands on, as I love learning about things I know nothing about. As a result, I often stumble upon articles that have some kind of reference to photography, whether overt or implied. I find connections to photography and creativity in most things I read. The November 2013 issue of The Atlantic magazine contains an article titled "The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel" which came from the opinions of a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and historians of technology. Ranked at #29 was the invention of photography, which they consider to be among the "Innovations that expand human intellect and its creative, expressive, and even moral possibilities". Ranked at #5 was the invention in the early 13th century of optical lenses, without which photography as we know it would not exist. This was considered to be an innovation that extends life.
Because I'm a photographer, of course I would have included both of these items in my own personal list of 50 greatest breakthroughs. But it's great to see that others outside of the field consider it to be that important, too.
A friend of mine sent me a link about The Tutu Project, and I instantly fell in love with these pictures. A project of the Carey Foundation, "The mission of The Tutu Project™ is to support the fund raising efforts of The Carey Foundation for women with breast cancer. We strive to bring laughter and understanding to a community that has endured far too much."
Photographer Bob Carey's wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. Having lost his mother to the disease, Bob needed something to distract him and started to photograph himself in various locations around the world. Working on this project has become a form of therapy for him, and I can see why.
Using lighthearted humor and the visually unexpected (an overweight, middle-aged man dressed only in a pink tutu!?!) are great tools for getting the viewer's attention and prompting them to ask questions about what they are seeing. Add to that Bob's outstanding sense of composition and you have a body of work that is eye-catching and funny/whimsical. Add to that the fact that these photographs are being created for a greater good, and you have a slam-dunk success. 
In the mid-1990's, I was invited to exhibit images from the Stargazing project in Sao Paolo, Brazil. A catalog was published that included an image from that work. Fast forward to two days ago, when I received the following message from someone in Brazil through my Facebook page, which I have edited somewhat:
"A few weeks ago, while looking for references material to start drawing the graphic design of my first EP (CD) - I'm an actor, singer, producer (former MTV latin america) and performer, born in Sao Paulo - came to my hands, the book "Fotografia Pensante" (edited by) the valuable and genius Luiz Guimaraes Monforte!"
He goes on to say that he found my photograph in the book as he leafed through it. Then he wrote:
"The impact that this image generated in my heart was so intense, that there is more than one week can not sleep! Seriosly!"
The idea that someone couldn't sleep for a week because of an image I made was.... well, way cool!!! But what struck me most about this is that once you put your work out into the world, you never know who will see it, when they will see it, or if it will resonate in any way with those who do see it.
It reminds me of the seeds of desert wildflowers that lie dormant for decades until just the right conditions occur that cause them to finally germinate and bloom. So plant the seeds, just get your work out there, and see what happens.
Today is Veteran's Day in the United States, a day that I have paid deep attention to ever since I worked on the Tears of Stone project. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, the Armistice was signed that ended the "war to end all wars". Or so they thought.... and hoped. Here is one last excerpt from Stone Work, the book by John Jerome that I have been quoting here recently, and which relates to my approach to my current as-yet-unrealized project. I could have written these words myself:
“I haven’t learned to let go of the need to control, direct, keep the canoe (or anything else) pointed straight: the westernized, apollonian requirement that one master things, apply more power. I keep fiddling with the throttle.
Of course I like effort, but that is not a sufficient excuse. I like effortlessness more, or claim to. What I like most is the search for that, for the effortless way, for those little physical moments when it goes just right: epiphanies, again. What I like best about stone work is working at it slowly and carefully, figuring out how to get the stones and get them into place with never the strain of a heavy lift. I like trying to make stone work effortless, which is satisfactorily impossible, and therefore endless, task. You can put a lot of effort into finding the effortless way.” (Jerome 135-136)
I was recently interviewed about the Seeking Perfection project for the PhotoEye blog. Here's a link to the interview. It's always a struggle to put into words the thought processes behind my work, but always a rewarding experience. This is because I find that I learn something different about my work and about my approach to making pictures when I either talk about it or write it down, than when I simply think about it. I really enjoy that sense of discovery as it helps to move me forward, even when I have long since completed a project.
I'm currently working on a project that has gone from nebulous to partially-formed in the past few months. But I am still wrestling with how to make it sing, am still in the middle of it, trying to figure it out, which means that I am frustrated by my apparent lack of progress. (Even though I know that every time I work on it, I am making progress.) I love this excerpt from John Jerome's book Stone Work, which talks about seeking a breakthrough:
“It is when I am finally stopped, when the sentence falls right, when what I’m trying to say finally comes off my tongue, when I understand what someone is saying to me, when the pieces fall together and what was muddy confusion is suddenly clear: the eureka moment, when some conglomeration of ideas comes together for you, that otherwise, until then, you were unable to link. A connection made that you can’t explain, that just . . . furthers you, somehow.
I used to have a wonderful quote about this moment pinned above my desk, but I lost it. Insert your own wonderful quote here. Mine was about that moment before which all is confusion and despair, and after which things suddenly become clear and there’s never going to be any confusion anymore. It doesn’t work out that way, of course, but the moment when you think it will is worth preserving. It is what I work for, I think.
The physical epiphanies available in working with wood and metal and stone are no different from those other little instants when some flicker of truth comes in. when the information from some sense organ or other succeeds in breaking through. I always thought these moments were supposed to be intellectual, the product of pure abstract thought. But they come to us through the sense organs. It was the taste of the apple, I think, that flipped us out of Eden, into the world.” (Jerome 108-109)
I worked solely in black & white until quite recently. It wasn't until I started the Seeking Perfection project that I began working in color. Until then, I didn't have a feel for it, didn't know what to do with it- I just didn't have a voice in color. I therefore find the following quote from John Jerome's book Stone Work really interesting: “By noon it has turned into an absolutely crystalline, deep-blue, clear-sky, windless February day, unimaginably clear and bright. The clarity comes, I believe, from the deepness of the blue above, its darkness…This morning the woods are wet again, and I can definitely see the pink haze. The woods are still basically gray, but you can pick up the tinge, the hue, of growth…When I come outdoors I see nothing but gray first, but the longer I look, the more color comes welling up. It’s as if my black-and-white eyes are being awakened from their winter sleep, as more color begins to appear in stuff that for the past three months I have dismissed as dead gray. This is wrong, of course, there’s always plenty of color, even in the snow... Maybe in deep winter I have, more or less despairingly, tuned it out. Maybe true color is just another one of those other rich experiences out there that I never quite have.” (Jerome 194-195)
Author John Jerome (1932-2002) wrote a book titled Stone Work, which I found thought-provoking and inspiring. The book follows Jerome as he sets about building a stone wall on his New England property, a creative process that was as rewarding and frustrating as any other. Here is a quote that speaks to me as a photographer: “I’ve never learned how to focus my attention, just as I never learned to study in school, only to read the books—the stories—that pulled my attention out of me. Actively focusing attention, coming up with enough mental energy to keep attention focused on something, was entirely too much effort. I didn’t know how to do it. I still don’t. I want to be able to step back and let the sheer beauty of this place overwhelm me, carry me passively along, but clearly that’s all wrong, a sure way to tune out: what I have to do to see into the woods is dig into the details (as Mies van der Rohe pointed out long ago—quoting, I’m sure, someone else). To focus on detail I take notes, attempting to write down the riches of the woods, trying to convince myself that I have gotten those riches. But I haven’t, I never have. I don’t know enough, don’t see enough, don’t know how to see. Don’t know what I’ve seen, what was going on, until I get back and start writing about it, telling myself the story: debriefing myself on the experience. Every time that I see a little bit more, it tells me there are worlds and worlds to see, deeper yet. The pleasure I get when I see a little tells me that all pleasure, all happiness, lies in seeing more. Whenever I manage to see some tiny bit, I always say to myself again, yes, that’s the way I wish I lived: seeing these things.” (Jerome 195-196)