VoxPhotographs Weblog

…or is it just a matter of being artistically curious? If you don’t pursue new methods of creating as an artist, does that make you “stuck” or “unadventurous”? Content?

Craig Stevens writes in the CMCA catalog for “Photographing Maine: Ten Years Later”: “The tendency in contemporary photography is to overwhelm the viewer with digital virtuosity and/or physical scale. This suite [his set of four photographs accepted into the exhibit] considers the photograph in its essential form, which is a combination of Light, Space and Time. A photograph does not need to be everything. It simply needs to be  itself.”

78 Chestnut St. © Craig Stevens. All Rights Reserved.

Maine photographer Corey Desrochers (http://cdphotographics.wordpress.com and www.cdphotographics.com) read my “Shock of the New…” posting and sent me some terrific new abstract and “augmented” photographs – these are from his blog:

The first he calls an Autumn Abstraction:

Copyright Corey Desrochers. All Rights Reserved

These next two are the first photo and his rendering of it a day or two later. I know which one gets my vote:

and it’s re-creation:

If you scroll down to the bottom of the blog, you are rewarded with this beauty:

Off Season © Corey DesRochers. All Rights Reserved.

Wow. It would take me a long time to get tired of looking at this one. Thanks, Corey, for sending your new work. Any other Maine fine art photographers working with new approaches to making pictures? Let me know!

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There is an essay by Joanna Lehan in the just rec’d issue of PHOTOGRAPH about “genres of photography”. She quotes Richard Mosse as saying “Genres are made in the same way pathways are beaten into the landscape; they are an unconscious result of collective usage.” Some artists, no doubt about it, choose instead to go by the road, and others eagerly explore the opening of the trail head and then the entire path to discover what the draw has been for those artists going before them.From Mosse’s series of US troops encamped in Saddam’s former palaces. Copyright Richard Mosse. All Rights Reserved.

Lehan also says: “Fine art and photojournalism are bleeding into each other like never before and creating the potential for rich dialogues between the heretofore polarized worlds of fine art photography and photojournalism.”

She goes on to say, “We might ascribe all this genre-busting to the evolution of our understanding of the medium itself, following the postmodern era. After flailing in death throes for decades, the myth of an objective photograph has finally died. Photographers feel freer to hold more loosely to the notion of ‘truth’, and use all tools and contexts available to make elliptical, nuanced statements about current events.”

Are photographers just messing with our brains when they create unreal reality? Are they playing god (always fun!)? But honestly, do we really even understand our own reality let alone anything else out there? And just as important, do we communicate our own reality to others totally objectively? Of course not.

I’ve always wondered at people who express adamant opinions about world events as if they really know what is actually happening out there. Such confidence results in a total loss of credibility as far as I’m concerned. We don’t have a clue what the reality of life out there is, including our own sphere of existence here in Maine. And I think photographers are bound to explore how photography is evolving and what the medium now gives them to tell us about life as they see it. If, in fact, they have anything unique to say.

Lehan concludes with, “And if the grammar of photojournalism is morphing, it raises critical questions about the representation of real-world events, and how we perceive them. While it’s not important to slap a label on various kinds of lens-based imagery, it is important to be cognizant of the visual language used in the images that tell us the important stories of our time, whether in news sources or on gallery walls.”

Maine photographers: tell your story in your own words – in whatever language or combination of languages you want to tell it. But do not be afraid of that trail head or we will all suffer for it.

This week, five stellar fine art photographers joined me for supper. Every other month I offer a “salon” evening in my Portland condo for a small group of Maine’s fine art photographers to try and recreate the days when people actually talked to each other face-to-face about something they were all passionate about – art, literature, music or philosophy.

For me, it’s all about fine art photography and there’s nothing I’d rather spend the evening doing than talking about it with the people in Maine who are actually making the photographs.

This time around I brought together Melonie Bennett, Felice Boucher, Rose Marasco, Jack Montgomery and Denise Froehlich, pictured in this order above. Each artist carted a sample of their work to the gallery and in this picture all five samples can be seen on the walls.

The fine art photography community in Maine needs to strengthen its impact and one way to do this is to make sure these artists know each other, learn from each other and move forward together to make an impact on the world’s art scene. At these salons the photographers who gather are so hungry for connection no introductions are necessary. Surrounded by their work in an intimate little group show, they dive right in getting to know each other and discussing the images on the wall.

So, what’s in it for me? Frankly – there needs to be a cohesive  fine art photography community in order for there to be a fine art photography market in Maine, so building the market also involves building the community. Without a community, there’s nothing to build visibility for. And I’m determined to do just that. I talk to the artists about creating dynamic websites, entering competitions, getting their work OUT THERE and supporting it non-stop including NOT donating work when requested by endless organizations that assume art is free and artists live by air alone. Demand to be paid and paid properly for your decades of shooting and level of expertise. I talk to them about culling their work for the very best pictures they can offer so we can build a fine art photography community that is second to none in this country. Trust me, the talent in this state is world-class. So let’s take it to the world.

So the three hours we spent around the dinner table talking about photography in general and these photographers’ work specifically is worth its weight in gold – for us all.

Getting connected – building a market. Getting visibility, selling fine art photographs. There’s a process here and the future is today.

Freddy Silva is a citizen of the world, a terrific photographer and on a quest to understand the world’s crop circles and sacred sites. He lectures worldwide, makes documentaries (3 so far) and writes books (Secrets in the Fields).

He just got back from his third trip to New Zealand – he calls the country “an addiction” and I heartily agree after my month there in January. His photographs will convince you of it in a heartbeat.

He took up my challenge of sharing his New Zealand photographs with the rest of us and they definitely put my own, posted here a month or so ago, firmly in the snapshot category! My favorite is one titled “Castle Hill” – Freddy said at a public lecture last fall that this is a “shot-of-a-lifetime” -  the sun hit this ancient monument just as he was driving to the site and was still 5 miles away. He nabbed it on the spot. I saw it on a big screen and it is a heart-stopping image of ancient boulders.

Castle Hill © Freddy Silva

Tongariro © Freddy Silva

Aspiring © Freddy Silva
Tongariro © Freddy Silva

Topeka © Freddy Silva

After a month in New Zealand I felt ready to get back to Maine and back to work. I have to admit I felt a tug on my heartstrings when I saw Freddy’s pictures. They made me know for certain I’d be going back.

No wonder Jack Montgomery writes on his website that he greatly admires F. Holland Day. And I’ll bet he’s sneaked more than one peak at Diane Arbus’ work, and spent some time with Sally Mann’s.

Nude Youth Playing the Pipe (1910) • F. Holland Day

But when you review Jack’s website there is no doubt the work is all his. He has two major portfolios featured on the site: Genderwork, and Coming of age at the turn of the century. Frankly, there are many, many phenomenal images there.

But let’s step back. In 2008, Susan Maasch Fine Art in Portland included Jack’s work in a show titled “Gender Through the Artist’s Eyes”. I hadn’t met Jack yet, but had heard about him – “local attorney making REALLY weird photographs, etc…” and the gallery was crowded at the opening night we attended. But I saw something incredible there that night – one of the most poignant, tender portraits I had ever seen, and I don’t say that lightly. It has haunted me ever since.

Cindy 2004, Boston © 2004 Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Yep, it’s a guy in that vinyl dress. But as I studied this photograph I felt that all of mankind’s struggles through the ages were summed up here, in this one image. At the same time, I was stunned by the artist’s success in capturing this one person’s own deeply and quite painfully personal story. A perfect and powerful photograph that needed no written support or explanation (people: STOP writing about your photographs, please!). This photograph writes its own book.

When I ran into Jack last week during First Friday at Susan Maasch Fine Art, I was delighted to hear he has a show opening there in April. He’s working on a nearly complete video. He’s a busy man: he’s on the board of Maine Media Workshops, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. He also serves the Portland Museum of Art as a member of the Photography Advisory Committee. Did I mention he’s an attorney (Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson)? But he very obviously goes somewhere deeply aesthetic and far away from all of this when he’s taking pictures.

I loved reading about Jack’s childhood in his artist’s statement – how his mother wove her family history for him in a hardscrabble tapestry. The Arthur Schopenhauer quote- “And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and there with as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed.“  supports Jack’s strong sense of time and place that very clearly influences his work, especially the new series Coming of age at the turn of the century.

Rosie and Jay © Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Molly and Lucky © Jack Montgomery. All rights reserved.

Katie in the Pond © Jack Montgomer. All rights reserved.

Sebastian at Morse Mountain Beach © Jack Montgomery

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It just about kills me not to reproduce every image on Jack’s website here in this blog posting, but that’s a good problem. Log on to his website and take the time to thoughtfully review the two collections. It will be the most rewarding thing you do this week.