Category: on photographers

John Chiara: Process

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, on photographers, overnight notes, Prints, Theory: landscape

American. b. 1971, in San Francisco, California

 It’s rare for a photographer to push the technical edge of the medium. And rarer still to reanimate corners of the world seen and forgotten by hundreds of thousands of eyes every day. — Ian Bourland

After dedicating an extended period in 1995 to making contact prints from his 2-1/4″ x 2-1/4 inch negatives, John Chiara decided that too much information was lost in the darkroom enlargement process. Over the next six years he developed his own equipment and processes to make first-generation unique photographs without using film. 

Chiara developed a process that is part photography, part sculpture, and part event. It is an undertaking requiring invention in his tools and patience in using them. [from his bio]

Process isn’t the same as procedure. Mr. Chiara has extended his process to such an extent that it has become a featured point in discussions around his imaging.

Large. Tonal inversion. Color inversion. Put paper in the wrong place. Expose paper to the wrong light-type. Use the much seen, the much ignored. Take as much time as needed. These are the procedures that he uses.

It is easy to overlook these works. Easier for those of us who can readily understand the means and methods, the mode of this process. We shouldn’t. We should take his work on his terms, trying to get to where he has gotten — not in recognition of his work, but so we can use it to open our own work… or, for some, renew our efforts.

Find your process within your procedure.

Elemental Film

Posted on Posted in creativity, minimum daily requirement, old bones, on photographers

the difference between the frame and the frame strip — the tripod and a track — standing and walking. Everyone makes a movie as they drive. No single frame holds onto your mind. Driving, I see patterns against other patterns. The fence framing makes the scenic live.

Time is one of the strands of exposure. Short, long. Too much, too little. How we make an emulsion respond to light is a judgement made over time. The table of elements for camera craftsmen is exceedingly small — few basic means of achieving a life.

// Maya Deren. Titarenko. Slow cinema

Maya Deren (1917 – 1961). “was one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of her time for her use of experimental editing techniques and her fascination with ecstatic religious dances. Deren earned an MA in English literature from Smith in 1939 before joining choreographer Katherine Dunham’s tour. “

“The still photograph is concerned with the isolation of the moment.  The moment is stayed, composed within a stable frame.  Films are concerned with the way in which a moment passes and becomes the next. This metamorphosis cannot be composed within the frame, but only through frames, from one frame to the next.” — Maya Deren

NOTES:

  • Brakhage, Stan. “Maya Deren.” In Film at Wit’s End: Eight Avant-Garde Filmmakers (1989): 91–112.
  • Clark, VeVe, Millicent Hudson, and Catrina Neiman. The Legend of Maya Deren (1984).
  • Deren, Maya. Papers. Department of Special Collections, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. NAW modern.
  • Obituary. NYTimes, October 14, 1961, 23:4.
  • Renan, Sheldon. An Introduction to the American Underground Film (1967).
  • Sadoul, Georges. Dictionary of Film Makers (1972).
  • Vogel, Amos. Film as a Subversive Art (1974).
Titarenko .. studio visit

“.. Proust taught me that the only way to communicate and to share what I was feeling with others is the use of the metaphor…” Titarenko

the City as Novel.. short

“slow cinema” concept.

  • Arnheim R. (1993) From Pleasure to Contemplation. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 51: 195-197.
  • Bíro Y (2008) Turbulence and flow in film – The rhythmic design. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Boer J (2015) As slow as possible: An enquiry into the redeeming power of boredom for slow film viewers. Unpublished Paper, University of Groningen, Netherlands.
  • Doane MA (2002) The emergence of cinematic time – Modernity, contingency, the archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Flanagan M (2012) Slow Cinema: temporality and style in contemporary art and experimental Film. PhD thesis, University of Exeter, UK.
  • Margulies I (1996) Nothing happens – Chantal Akerman’s hyperrealist everyday. Durham, London: Duke University Press.
  • Wollen P (2000) Time in video and film art. In: Capellazzo A (ed) Making time: considering time as a material in contemporary video and film. Palm Beach, Fla.: Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, pp.7-13.