Category: A Symbol Life

Getting Here -out of Art School

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, about, art school, morning wood, on photographers1 Comment

There was a time, the early 70s, when a small list, your teachers and fellow students could get you to a large world of artists. Not the entire world, but certainly a grand sampling. Ask 3 people to introduce you to another few people, who introduce you, who help even more, until – BAM, a contact list. Just 3 months work… it could be done again, only the names would be different.

that group:

Bob Flick;Joel Meyerowitz; Van Deren Coke; Joe Deal;  Ron Walker;  Lee Witkin;  Al Sweetman;  Don Drowty; Ellen Brooks;  Dennis Hearne;  Elaine Mayes; Bart Parker;  Larry Sultan;  Ed West;  Arthur Siegel;Leonard Freed;  Margery Mann;  Harry Callahan; Gary Metz; Peter Gowland;  Ansel Adams;  Ed Ruscha; Grace Mayer;  Mike Mandel;  Harold Allen;  Laura Gilpin;  Hank Smith;  Anne Tucker;  Phil Perkis;  Michael Simon;  Bill Owens; Manuel Bravo;  Nathan Lyons;  Bill Arnold;  Jim Hajicek;  Les Krims;  Joyce Neimanas; Judy Dater;  Al Coleman;  Ira Nowinski; Jack Welpott; Linda Parry;  Burke Uzzle;  Jim Dow;  Dave Freund; Todd Walker;  Catherine Jansen;  Eva Rubinstein;  Eddie Sievers; Minor White; Michael Becotte;  Fred McDarrah;  Richard Link;  Betty Hahn; Nick Hlobeczy; Bob Cumming;Ken Josephson;  Naomi Savage;  John Divola; Tom Barrow; Carl Chiarenza; Bea Nettles;  Roger Mertin;  John Benson; Cal Kowal;  Aaron Siskind;  R. von Sternberg;  Paige Pinnell;  Arthur Tress;  Jacob Deschin;  Linda Connor; Don Blumbeing;  Jim Alinder;  Harold Jones;  M.J. Walker;  Bill Parker; Al Woolpert;  Duke Baltz; Gus Kayafas;Duane Michals;  Darryl Curran; Arnold Newman; Geoff Winningham; Paul Vanderbilt; Anne Noggle; Timo Pajunen;Edmund Teske; Imogen Cunningham; Andy Anderson;  Bill Larson;  Pete Bunnell; Robert Doherty;  Joe Jachna; Oscar Bailey; Jerry Uelsmann; Art Sinsabaugh;  Charles Roitz;  Doug Stewart; Chuck Swedlund;  Bill Edwards;  Bobby Heinecken;  Micha Bar-Am;  Beaumont Newhall;  Wynn Bullock; Jerry McMillan;  John Schulze; Neal Slavin; Lee Rice; Joan Lyons; Bill Jenkins; Fred Sommer;  Barbara Crane; Emmet Gowin; Barbara Morgan; Mark Power;  Cornell Capa;  Lionel Suntop; Bunny Yeager; Doug Prince;  Eileen Cowin;  Eve Sonneman; Reg Heron;  Scott Hyde;Conrad Pressma;  John Szarkowski;  Bill Eggleston;  Mike Bishop;  Bob Fichter; Liliane DeCock; Tom Porett;  Arnold Crane; Arnold Gassan;  Elliott Erwitt;  Len Gittleman;

Many are gone. Most aren’t even remembered, yet at one time they were the time.

Post, expanded —

(8/27/17) … In an online world, experts like to block, to maintain their own value, self-appraisal. I have this blog, others choose to hold forth in sponsored forums. One person asked a question of me about the above, which I thought I’d prefaced correctly with the (now bolded section). Anyway, his question:

“What is the source of your list?” (Merg Ross)

He may not be expert blocking. I don’t know. Rather than answer back on that forum, I’ll expand here just a bit.

I began photography seriously by learning dye transfer. After just a few weeks of training, I was making airbrushed separation negatives; reading every scrap of information I could. These first efforts were in technique, the same thing every learning does – get the elementary done; collect all the elements you can handle. In doing that, I noticed that the Kodak materials were not complete, even somewhat scattered, or even outright wrong. What should be done? I contacted Kodak. Made a call to the main switchboard. After a few transfers, I got hold of a woman who had written some of the dataguides. Jeanette was the first person I spoke to who knew the famous. And she was generous with introductions. Like many structural keepers, she shared easily after qualification. She told me about Henry Holmes Smith at Indiana. I visited him, but didn’t feel that school was my path…not at that stage. I was a working commercial photographer able to set my own schedule; able to make any pictures I wanted on my time.

Then (a few years on) came my draft notice. I went. I returned. My DEROS was to Oakland Terminal in the middle of the night I was ‘exited.’ With cash in hand I went into San Francisco.

The next morning, I walked to a camera store to get supplies, which they didn’t have; however, the counter clerk told me about Adolph Gasser out on Geary Boulevard. It was there that I met Gene Saunders, the salesman who sold me my enlarger. He also told me about a new gallery that was exclusively photography.

Focus Gallery on Union Street was a haven for the world of photographers. Helen Head Johnson was the keeper. I showed her some of my dye transfers. She began introducing me to people, and suggested I check out SFAI since I had the GI bill and no real job. She told me to be certain to talk to Margery Mann.

I did. I enrolled. I got an MFA. The program was small, some of my fellow students were Larry Sultan, Mike Mandel, Harry Bowers, Adal Maldonado …

Oh, one other thing: a friend from the Army days worked for the phone company at Pine/Bush with something called ESS. He had access to every phone in the US. Everyone who had a phone, he had their address. Sweet. So, for awhile, I published something called the Contact Sheet – an address book for fine artists who wanted to connect.

Handmade Waving

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, Criticism, da net, morning wood1 Comment

if art is only that which is made by hand, what is made of art.

If art is only made by hand, that leaves us with only waving our hands about in the air. Art is more than a gesture. Striking the work of the machine, even the algorithmic machine means we can do nothing but point and mime.

We enter this strange trap by way of online photographers asserting that their devotion is more genuine than another’s; that the darkroom is the only true light. The glow of the safelight is safe assurance of art being made.

They have discovered the argument lodged against the original camera, the original machine of artistic fraud. They don’t notice the trap of their own devices, their own barriers to fuller realization. One artist’s limit is another’s muse.

Chemical engineering, optics and emulsion are no more liberating to all than is sensor and software inhibiting to all. Neither path is the exclusive path – one true path, since the path is just a metaphor, not even an icon.

original sin of photography is that it isn’t handmade so must remain the hand maiden of art

if the handmade is a requirement, how far down the tortoise stack do you go before giving up on the requirement to make your ingredients, or is it “turtles all the way down” the rabbit hole?

Others hold that the earth has nine corners by which the heavens are supported. Another disagreeing from these would have the earth supported by seven elephants, and the elephants do not sink down because their feet are fixed on a tortoise. When asked who would fix the body of the tortoise, so that it would not collapse, he said that he did not know. – Charpentier, ‘A Treatise on Hindu Cosmography from the Seventeenth Century’