Category: art stuff

Finding Others

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, art stuff, artgame, minimum daily requirement, visual mind

People have always formed groups. We begin because of that. Life is a result of combination. Civilization is the telling of those gatherings using forms carried by those groups.

How do you find interesting others? Art school is a major place; common ground. A distinction is made between those who went to art school and those who didn’t. Schools are ranked, somewhat, by faculty value in the artworld. Art schools came of age after the general revival of college in the 50s was followed upon by the college student gap of the 60s. This was the culture gap. Between the Greatest Generation and their children the Boomer Generation.

Fear not, the Boomers lost. 1968 broke that bubble.

How do I look for artists? I look at art schools. The web takes me there. I also look at the art world. The web takes me to the gallery schemes. Quite easy to find something like this:

this is after looking at one of these people’s webpage. they listed galleries with their work.

this is, to my eye, a wide range group. That fact makes it a good jump point to current artworld view of photography art.

this isn’t a wide enough age range to be useful for advanced research. You won’t find the edge, not the direction of the photography world. You won’t find that on the established gallery pages.

to find the future, you have to hunt much harder. commerce is about the past, not the future.

commerce hates risk,

Gibson: Rodinal + Tri-X

Posted on Posted in art stuff, book shelf, labnotes, on photographers

Venerable members of the silver brigade. Marched photography from the hallways to the white walls; from the basement to the main gallery. Art words began to be understood, and refined by photographers during the 60s and 70s. Ralph Gibson was a promoter, a vagabond, a troubadour for photography. Mainly the book, that area he mastered, and mentored through his Lustrum Press.

A mix of techniques, craft skill along with image skills. The walkway and the walk. Path and walker.

“The reason I publish under Lustrum is the same as my attitude towards the frame,” Gibson says. “I want all the credit, all the blame, complete and total autonomy.”

Ralph Gibson’s early method was using Tri-X shot at 100 to 400, processed in Rodinal 1:25 for 11 minutes, agitation by rolling tank on its side 10 seconds every 90 seconds. He printed using Brovira 111, Nos. 4 and 5 in Dektol 1:1 for 2 to 3 minutes. No toning. Dry between blotters.

That was then. These days digital. Lustrum thrives as does Ralph Gibson (at 83, b.1939 – ).

“Digital Color— at Leica Gallery Los Angeles on January 17 (2019), the day after his 80th birthday—features images created entirely with digital cameras”

“Digital responded to the way my eye sees the world in a very emphatic, ineluctable way,” Gibson says. “Very few people get a chance to reinvent themselves when they’re 75.”