Category: art school

Gassan: Report

Posted on Posted in art school, creativity, minimum daily requirement, Theory

following up with more Camera Lucida matters. The final Journal was by Arnold Gassan. Arnold Gassan (1930-2001) was an American photographer, author, and psychologist. Gassan became a licensed psychologist in Arizona in 1991.

  • books written by Gassan include: A Chronology of Photography (1972)
  • The Color Print Book: A Survey of Contemporary Color Photographic Print Making Methods for the Creative Photographer
  • Handbook for Contemporary Photography
  • Exploring Black and White Photography (1989).

“The materials of art have always influenced the image” –Arnold Gassan

Notes from: “Technique could be learned alone to a large degree, Understanding needed outside assistance.. ” … “while reading Ludwig Wittgenstine: The Man and His Philosophy, that I encounterd this description which made clear to me my hesitancy about Newhall’s book: “In teaching you.. I’m like a guide showig you how to fid your way round. London .. At the end … you will know London. Of course a good guide will take you through the important streets ...”

aperture:

  • Vol 5, #4, White and chappell, “Some Methods for Experiencing Photographs.”
  • Vol. 7, #2, “The Way Through Camera Work.”
  • Vol. 9, #4, “The Idea of the Workshop in Photography.”

little remains of the details of his life… this is one small item. His effort to finish archiving his photographs in last years. The scanner was his tool at his end.

“I am not especially interested in anonymous photography, or pictorialist photography, or avant-garde photography, or in straight, crooked or any other subspecific category of photography; I am interested in the entire, indivisible, hairy beast — because in the real world, where photographs are made, these subspecies, or races, interbreed shamelessly and continually.” — John Szarkwoski

Other biblio materials [of use for “Gestus”]

  • Boleslavski, Acting, the First Six Lessons
  • Gurdjieff, All and Everything
  • Herrigel, Zen and the Art of Archery
  • Maxlow, Toward a Psychology of Being
  • Ornstein, The Natrue of Huan Consciousness, and The Psychology of Concsiousness
  • Ouspenski, In Search of the Miraculouos
  • Persl, Gestalt Therapy,
  • Colin Wilson, The Occult.

east lyme: pilgrim age

Posted on Posted in art school, book shelf, minimum daily requirement, on photographersTagged , , ,

You know the names of the people, even if you don’t recognize the name of the place. Fellow photographers prompt us. Place probably prompts geographers and letter carriers.
Influence felt and spread. Will you explore for inspiration? What does seeing what they saw provide? I have no answer to either of the questions. I don’t travel to visit places of others. I have never been a pilgrim.

Walker Evans, east lyme… the note idled over a month… for no reason. Okay, one. I considered buying the book. I still haven’t bought it.

Walker Evans lived in this house in East Lyme, Connecticut, from 1967 until shortly before his death in 1975. The house was designed by Evans and his friend Robert Busser, a Yale architecture student. Letters and postcards were often addressed to Old Lyme or Lyme because their Mail truck turned around at Stewart’s Corner, East Lyme.]

Reviewing others’ work provokes a review of mine. Same thing sometimes happens as I edit or revise current work. Few interesting matters ever reach finality.

as test to yourself: Why hold interest in another past place. We don’t see Evans’ time, footprints. A deed with his namespace; perhaps a deposit check could hold as much history– commerce, reverential. Or, is the structure a demonstration of built world a key to His namesake. A keepsake worth travel of two current actors on the artworld.

[Two photographers, James Welling and Mark Ruwedel, just two years apart visited Evans’ home in 2016 and 2018, respectively. This volume places the projects undertaken by both in dialogue, highlighting their similarities and differences.]

[Shooting passersby against a plywood backdrop as they crossed his field of vision from distant right to close left (some noticing him, most not), with the light striking and modeling their features, Evans found that what he was creating with these images was “the physiognomy of a nation.” This book compiles the photographs, contact sheets, small-version printlets, Evans’ annotations to newspaper clippings, drafts for an unpublished text, telegrams and every available print Evans made, along with the Fortune spread as published. Labor Anonymous captures a long-vanished moment in American history, and a crucial project in Evans’ oeuvre.} — here

Welling: (b. 1951)

Ruwedel: (b. Bethlehem, PA 1954)