Category: meaning

camera lucida duet 

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, meaning, studio table, TheoryTagged , , , ,

The real and the spiel.
The Joycean eyepatch–of AI. What finds we find when the word becomes the key. What hides behind the unopened doors. My searches begin closed, become openings. Sadly, the googs and googlers have reached an end state: commerce.

All travel makes more connections than we are prepared to take. Words become phrases which, in turn produce more phrases. In early periods of a field more variety is brought in as possible sets for the new setting.

Camera Lucida was one set. Visual Studies Workshop was a fertile ground. Consider the words chosen as totems for that new place in Rochester. Visual. Studies. Workshop. It could have been called: SUNY Buffalo Extension. No sauce. Nathan got it right. From that place came people. They maintained contacts as is the case in most fields. In new fields, those connections are stronger than in old fields.

Camera Lucida, a device, book, journal. The camera lucida was a drawing aid with which Talbot failed. This failure became the path of photography. The book by Barthe became the errant irritant in criticism, producing more puss than pearl. Nevertheless, it was productive of thought when it was needed.
Barthes’s Work: Barthes’s “Camera Lucida” explores the nature of photography, the relationship between the photographer and the spectator, and the concept of the “punctum” (a specific detail in a photograph that evokes a strong emotional response). 

Further:

Talbot –dated his efforts to invent photography to his disappointing results using a Camera Lucida as a drawing aid at Lake Como in Italy in 1833?

But alas, it only seemed simple, he later recalled, “for when the eye was removed from the prism—in which all looked beautiful—I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold.” The would-be artist was William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877)

Bringing me to my searched items. The Journal of… I have the volumes. They’ve lived in boxes of similar sized publications.

MUFFOLETTO, ROBERT, EDITOR Milwaukee: Camera Lucida, 1979. Milwaukee.
Ceased publishing after Number 7, 1983
A complete set (Nos. 1-7) of the influential early journal of photographic criticism. Contributors include A. D. Coleman, Claudia Wolz, Bill Jorden, and Michael Simon, and topics include photography and therapy, an anthropology of photography, perception and photography, and more. The last issue is a double number written by Arnold Gassan, a photography instructor turned psychiatrist and student/devotee of White. It is titled, “Report: Minor White Workshops and a Dialogue Failed.” Date: 1979. Baumgartner [US]

The box traveled on its own.. Buying from dead critics photographers estates and the oughts of this century I both discover and re-discover influences if not on me directly on the world around me the immediate world of art of the dark-room entering the white room…

phrases I uttered that others published.. The world that lasts is always the world that someone else collects you need a collector an editor a publisher.. so that what you say and what you have selected is preserved by someone on some shelf…

Two parts to an ides:

  • inspriation, first idea, an initial question which may come as a doubt.
  • next, the reason for re-examination and the resulting drive


“Is history not simply that time when we were not born?” writes Roland Barthes in the very beginning of the second chapter of his book — Camera Lucida. I

Finding Time

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, meaning, minimum daily requirement

setting out the possibles, asking which add, which don’t. Early mistakes with new knowledge make correction necessary. Fix that file layout. The camera convention is based on a single camera. Ooh. [ perhaps a process post forthcoming]

Deciding between writing and ‘real’ working, ie, the purpose tasks. Writing is important, not always key. Some writing, because of the topic, is not central to my path. Not on my keyway.

This notation is a stop point for my logging. a marker to remind me about picture making. Let the long form, history writers have the air.

This came up over the past week. I know the Valley Actors. Didn’t trust them, still don’t. In prep for editing a set of images, I found pictures worth more than storage. In tracking the file I promised the interior one to make more image material. It is what moves me.

So, to that.

Showing Prints on the Web

Posted on Posted in da net, meaning, overnight notes, visual mindTagged , , ,

Beginning printers learn by coordinating their eye and hand, by looking at more things, until they can make assessments of greater abstraction, ie, things removed, even remote, from the origin object. With skill, you see the tree not the print — do this enough and you will see the print as you look at the mountain… The representation of an image may serve as mnemonic, even as illustration to other visualizers. A common grounding; a touchstone needn’t be stonehenge. The self aware growing their visual mindscape. Certainly making a point in the Web2 world can be made with an illustration.

While a “print” can’t be shown over the wire, it can be transmitted, even understood; understood well enough that Telemedicine works.

craft doesn’t have to limit, nor does conversation have to be limited to craft 
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Proust

It was commonplace to teach by way of slides. I used it as supporting background teaching dye transfer. Additionally, I was able to demonstrate differences in filtration methods in making Type C prints. Side by side on the same slide. Humans capable of making art are quite apt at understanding comparisons. We see in relationships. For absolutes we need a machine. Our eye is the bundle of the revealed brain.

One use of the cellshot is a record, a timestamp of that “light”

You Don’t Show, not even as illustration because:

  • don’t have
  • embarrassed by what have
  • don’t know how to show
  • afraid [you/ someone] will steal
  • don’t care about your opinion
  • [why expend so much effort claiming a ‘one true’ way] Even the emoji using redundant engineer. I assume he didn’t study physics, or isn’t interested in current “frame” meanings.

Can I show more using the ‘net? Is electronic imagery more flexible? Can you, using chemical means, balance the curve differences of color (RA4) paper? Not without recourse to multiple colored masks. An almost triiavl task for intermediate skilled digital based retoucher/printer. A well managed system provides immediate soft=proof.

Assessing the Mentor:

said / meant

I’ve never taken a photograph with my cellphone.  [i’m not good enough photographer to use the simple tool, to make memorable or useful picture]

Prepaid cell offering less coverage in remote locations. Still, makes a great retort of comfort to those steeped in creating a nearer to Thee legend.

An underdeveloped visual mind is terrible thing to brag about.

Their safety concern– how deep is their ocean?

  • ” I have only a cell phone for emergency roadside need.”
  • “I have never taken a picture with one [MEANING: so he can’t show you anything he has or has seen.]”
  • ” Besides, even the cell phone selfie phonies couldn’t get reception at the beautiful points in my recent travel.”

If you carry the phone for emergency roadside use… and there is no reception…. your life lessons may be flawed. Not the best guide; not a skilled map-maker.

The logicians involved are retired very active forum posters. One, an aerospace engineer who was retired at 55; the other an order processor at a softwoods shop. He retired in his late 60s; clearly more critical in job function than the redundant engineer.

They would have you follow their advice, (why they give it so often) that a cell phone is only good for roadside emergency — even where there is not service[?]. Lacking cell service, the supposed phone provides recording features, alas, not of use for these cellular phonies. Perhaps they mean they have a satellite phone. Good for them.

SALSA: “Theocratic approach has no place..” Feb 15, 2016 Updated Aug 4, 2017  \\North Conway
NOTE: use the word as defined [relating to or denoting a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god.] ex: Vatican.

Behind their legend: in one case, mystery permits changing his story to fit the need for boasting of skills. In showing nothing, he lets you imagine him more capable than he is; more productive than he ever was.

Reasons for maintaining their legend:

  • they are embarrassed by what they have
  • they don’t have what they claim
  • maybe lack skill of translation

Skill types… the reason for craft is translation. Good to see your work is well regarded.

Exposure. Composition. Using the meter and following the measure of 18th century drawing rooms has a simple reward. Just not up to meeting on the majors stage

You must know where to show. Certainly the large, long-lived photo forums lack the shared background for worthwhile exchange. As well, they fail at being able to exchange craft information.

Perhaps they have stalled in all roads of their life — the roadside service has no on-ramp ramp

Tip toe through the tall tale

You can’t show on the Internet, you can’t evaluate a photograph, yet he didn’t like the prints, the photographs only seen on the Internet .
 That web fight was between Drew, Kirk Gittings,& Bob Carnie over print quality.

once this was pointed out to him, once it was pointed out to others that he had a website, within weeks his “own” website was taken down — chose to no longer show on the internet.