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Amazing Days
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
The semester has begun, and many of my friends and colleagues are back in their classrooms and lecture halls inspiring willing, ready students of higher education.
For me, this (lost) summer was a bit of a technological explosion: I updated this, my WordPress blog (actually, the team at Bad Feather updated it!); got permanently locked out of my FB page (Yes, that’s me. No, I can’t access it. Yes, FB has been notified and NO, they haven’t responded. Yes, my Twitter feed still goes to my status updates and makes it look like I’m actually on FB a lot…but I digress…). I also figured out how to best utilize Twitter (and TweetDeck) and love writing with it; I had fun with my Flip video; I geeked out on various Apps for my iPhone (and recorded an entire “live” album on my built-in Voice Memo App).
I also watched the people (and youth) of Iran challenge their government through the same “social media” networks that many use in frivolous ways on a daily basis, and I honored the imprisoned, innocent Baha’is in Iran who have spent over one year in jail for serving their country and promoting the oneness of humanity.
In addition to the frenetic-ness of the summer, I sat in awe and wonder as various absolutely amazing programs, utilities and apps were developed and released into our Internet-world. I was introduced to Tokbox, Qik, Shazam, and Blip.fm and began using them regularly.
With bluetooth capabilities in our cars, Pandora.com playing on our iPhones, Skype on the laptops and massive file sharing through any number of online services, I began to feel rather Jetsonian. I just need to find Rosie the Robot to complete the picture.
But then I came across this passage (online, of course) by Thoreau:
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” —Thoreau, Walden
And then this from the maestro:
These two passages instantly resonated with me and my inner dialogue felt stimulated, nourished and challenged. I both agree and disagree with Thoreau and Benjamin. Many of the “inventions” I came across this summer are not much more than “pretty toys” and fall into the entertainment category. In fact, depending on how you use them, all of these tools could reside at the level of superficial entertainment.
But that is precisely the point. It depends on how you use them. For example: the people of Iran (primarily young adults) were able to publicize on a hitherto unprecedented international level what they saw as rigged election results by the Iranian government through utilizing Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Protests, beatings, police crackdowns and deaths were all placed directly in front of the eyes of the people of the world to see and bear witness to. No longer could a government simply drive over to the TV and radio stations and easily shut down the stream of information flowing to the outside world. Every single person with a cell phone or a PDA was a potential broadcaster in a worldwide sea of journalists. It was truly amazing to watch and follow (and I say that regardless of political positions).
That may beg the question, however: Why do we care what happens to people on the other side of the world? The answer (besides a much longer blog post) is that our world has shrunk to such a degree that we are all connected in ways that, as a human race, we have never been before.
Let me say that again: in the entire history of humanity, humans have never been this in touch with each other—socially, politically, through commerce and the military, through ideas and religion and popular culture—ever before. New realities require new paradigms and new ways of existing. To many, it’s obvious that a new system of ordering society at the global and local levels to facilitate those social, political, commercial, popular culture connections is not only required but will inevitably be constructed. (And to be honest, to be alive at a time when the global body-politic of humanity is passing through such changes is about the most amazing, exciting thing I can even imagine, like witnessing a stormy teenager enter into a confident adulthood.)
Back to the point though. Benjamin’s wonderful observation, made nearly a century ago, is as much about the worth of the content published as it is about the ability to publish, held even more so now by any and all average citizens.
In the world of publishing (and photography book publishing specifically), there is a fascinating development going on in the form of print-on-demand books. As I state in my essay “Who Cares About Books” (published by LACMA in WordsWithoutPictures*), “An entirely new generation of curators, critics and photographers** see the book as a central form of expression in photography.” This appreciation of the book, coupled with the ease and accessibility of book production, thanks to companies like Blurb.com, has fueled a flood of new books, all printed out one at a time using technology that was unthinkable 15 years ago.
Anyway, the coolest tools of the age are all around us, and they only add to the great developments of the twentieth century. The ability to produce a book is only a few clicks away. The responsibility to produce worthwhile content, as Thoreau implies, is still there.
[For someone not at all related to photography but doing amazing book~literature~new media stuff, check out Barbara Hui. Her Litmap project, about Rings of Saturn: An English Pilgrimage by W. G. Sebald will blow you away. Imagine Martin Parr and Gerry Badger's The Photobook: A History organized like this!]
* —join essayists and Charlotte Cotton in NYC September 17, 2009).
** —Markus Schaden (of Schaden.com, Europe’s best photobook store talks with Martin Parr about Parr’s newest book, Playas, published by Editorial RM)
To order the WordsWithoutPictures book (a print-on-demand title), click the image below. This is what will come in the mail (if you order two, that is):
“First Ever Twitter Film Fest”
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
A friend of mine, Negar Mottahedeh, is a professor at Duke University, where she teaches Introduction to Film Studies (as well as being a writer and thinker on film, culture, the arts and innovation, among other things). As a semester-end group project, she cooked up the idea of a Twitter film festival. What exactly does that mean, you ask? It involved setting up a blog featuring YouTube clips from various films that were screened at different hours, as well as setting up a shared Twitter account (twitfilm) and then tweeting about them as a form of class discussion. Oh, I wish I could have taken that class (or at least known about it ahead of time)!
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran this piece about the film festival on the 15th of April, and the unique in-class assignment is sure to get broader attention in the education and film community at large.
Listen to Negar talk about the festival (courtesy D21-Projektblog).
[Now.... how can I apply this to my own classes?? hmmm...]
Augustus Vincent Tack (1870-1949)
Sunday, April 12th, 2009This last week, a painter of whom I had never heard was brought up in an indirect conversation (by Ed Ruscha, of all people). Augustus Vincent Tack was born in Pittsburgh, spent a large part of his life in New York City, but maintained a portrait studio in Washington, DC, painting the likenesses of political and military figures from the first half of the 20th century. (Self-portrait below)
What he is less known for are his abstract works that loosely reference the landscape—Nature, as a leaping off point—and aspire to spiritual, mystic themes. His abstract works, who some mention as very early examples of Abstract Expressionism, were created almost exclusively for Duncan Phillips, the wealthy steel baron who left The Phillips Collection to posterity (and our benefit). This collection, situated in DC, houses works by other painters and abstractionists including Paul Klee, Georges Bracque, Mark Rothko and James McNeil Whistler.
According to history, Tack’s abstractions were commercially unsuccessful (imagine that!), but he continued to pursue them independent from his commissioned portraits and landscapes which he made in the style of the day. That aspect to the story sounds, in itself, timeless. What paying patrons want to see is rarely what the artist him/herself would like to produce, but the economic realities of life bear down upon us all, regardless of what century we’re talking about. Thankfully, Tack kept exploring his personal work, and thankfully there was one patron for whom the abstractions were powerful, moving, and worthy of collecting.
Tack’s work is mentioned briefly in a chapter titled Nature Symbolized: Painting from Ryder to Hartley, in the book The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985, published by Abbeville for a massive, sweeping exhibition at LACMA in 1986.
And a gorgeous little descriptive landscape….
Looking Up…
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008I have a quick story to relate. This past summer, one of the highlights of Review Santa Fe was sitting at the Cowgirl restaurant and chatting with various reviewers and photographers after the open portfolio sharing event. At one point in the conversation, a young gentleman brusquely interrupted the conversation to say, “Excuse me, but in exactly 4 minutes and 30 seconds the Space Shuttle Endeavor, coupled to the Space Station will pass directly overhead. And due to the fact that, while it’s not long after sunset here on the ground, in the atmosphere, the sun will still be shining on the Space Station and we will be able to see this sight if we go stand in the street.”
With a bit of nonchalance and piqued curiosity, about 5 of us headed outside. What did we have to lose? Then, the most amazing thing happened. The photographer calmly stated that it should be visible just “over there.” AND IT CAME STREAMING ACROSS THE NIGHT SKY! It was the largest night-time object, apart from the moon, that I think we will ever be able to see with the naked eye.
Stuart Sperling was the photographer. And he just sent me another email today, which begins,
“Hi from the dude from Review Santa Fe, who’s all into space and 3D and whatnot.”
I knew exactly who he was.
“The Shuttle Endeavor is mated to the Space Station this week, which, again, makes for really bright viewing opportunities for those who lie in the path. A good one’s coming up for Santa Fe tomorrow (Thursday) at 5:43PM. Check it out if the sky’s clear. Look to the West/Southwest, and find Venus (and Jupiter will be just up to the left of Venus). The Station/Shuttle should climb from right there, cruising up and SE over you at about 18,000 mph. Rock on.”
Check out this visual. I don’t know what all those lines mean, but it reminds me of Asteroids (as in, Atari).
Thank you, Stuart. Rock on.
[UPDATE: It's 5:50. Just came back in from watching that bright light cruise up and over our heads. Again, thanks Stuart!]
Godzilla vs. Iran
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008Errol Morris, a documentary filmmaker based in Connecticut, has just written a blog post on the New York Times website entitled Photography as a Weapon. In the post, he interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and an expert on digital photography and together they raise age-old (or at least Industrial Age-old) questions about truth and veracity when it comes to photographs and our vision. It’s well worth the read.
Poet of the Cinema
Monday, February 25th, 2008In the Summer of 2006, while editor of the photo-eye Booklist, I was happy to publish a review of Instant Light, a collection of Polaroids by the Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (published by Thames and Hudson). The review was by Krishnan Venkatesh, a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, and a fan of Tarkovsky’s films. He had introduced me to the film maker’s work during my graduate school years, and when the book came across my desk, I immediately thought of Krishnan.
A new book of previously unseen photographs by Tarkovsky has just been published by White Space Gallery, in London, in association with the Tarkovsky Foundation. It is entitled Bright, Bright Day. The images were all taken in Russia and Italy between 1979 and 1984, just two years before his life was cut short by cancer, at the age of 54. The photographs range from light-filled landscapes and tender portraits to casual images of the film maker’s family and friends. Taken together, they present a man who’s singular filmic style translated readily to the visual poetry of the still image.
What follows below are a few excerpts from Poet of the Cinema. This interview is available as a bonus feature on Tarkovsky’s film, Andrei Rublev (DVD, through Netflix or any other good source). For a more thorough presentation of Tarkovsky’s philosophical underpinnings, pick up a copy of Sculpting in Time, available readily on the out-of-print book market. These are simply a few of the most poignant passages from the interview, which is wide-ranging and mostly concerns the making of the film Andrei Rublev. They contain some gems of insight, not only into Tarkovsky’s approach to making a film, but into his life and beliefs.
Tarkovsky: The pressure Rublev is subject to is not an exception. An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrei Rublev; the search for harmonic relationships among men, between art and life, between time and history. That’s what my film is all about.
Another important theme [in Andrei Rublev] is man’s experience. In this film my message is that it’s impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others’ [experience]. We must live our own experience; we cannot inherit it. People often say, “Use your father’s experience.” Too easy; each of us must get his own. But once we’ve got it, we no longer have time to use it. And the new generations rightly refuse to listen to it. They want to live it but then they also die. This is the law of life, its real meaning. We cannot impose our experience on other people or force them to feel suggested emotions. Only through personal experience, do we understand life. Rublev, the monk, lived a complex life; he studied with master Radonevsky at the Holy Trinity, but he lived at variance with his teaching. He got to see the world through his master’s eyes. Only at the end of his life did he live his own way.
“Andrey, What is art?â€
Tarkovsky: Before defining art—or any concept—we must answer a far broader question. What’s the meaning of man’s life on earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment, then art is a means to get there. This, of course, [is] in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say that art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don’t believe in this possibility of knowing; I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man’s own spiritual capabilities and he can then rise above himself to use what we call ‘free will’.
“What would you like to tell young people?â€
Learn to love solitude, to be more alone with yourselves. The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive actions not to feel lonely. And this is a sad thing. The individual must learn to be on his own as a child for this doesn’t’ mean to be alone: it means not to get bored with oneself, which is a very dangerous symptom, almost a disease.
In the first paragraph quoted here, Tarkovsky states, “Art would be useless if the world were perfect.” This simple statement requires some unpacking, for behind the surface of the statement lies some deeper implications. The reverse statement would be that art is useful when the world is imperfect. Tarkovsky sees art as useful, since he tells us the condition under which it becomes useless.
In each of the three statements which form the heart of that paragraph he discusses what he sees as the motivations behind art: the artist exists because the world is not perfect; art would be useless if the world were perfect; art is born out of an ill-designed world; man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. What emerges from this tiny constellation of statements is a belief that the artistic impulse is born of the desire to seek out and create harmony and perfection. We lack perfection, we live in imperfection, and from that state emerges the artist, the harmonizer.
It is, quite honestly, a very optimistic belief, and a very traditional understanding of the role of the artist in society. Man’s true nature is both material and spiritual, and art must take into account both sides. Tarkovsky employs the word “useful” and the reader clearly understands that any utilitarian use of a film is ludicrous; it is implied that a “spiritual” usefulness is what he is getting at. In the broadest sense, Tarkovsky sees the visual and performing arts as having an educational role in society–a reminder that life is comprised of more than just the material. In short, he aspires to awaken the spiritual.
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney