Nothing To Divine

Posted on Posted in Criticism, The NegativeLeave a comment

A collage isn’t anything but a collage.

The material is immaterial he would say, it is the process that defines, delimits the artists circle. And if this is your own argument, then are you eliminated from being a photographer if you use a digital record-output process. So says the silver print, film is photography, lens & camera are photography mannered photographers. Those who wear large pocketed khaki vests are photographers type of photographers.

I ask you, as a reminder too, do you use asphalt or bitumen? Do you use ferric salts without a lense? Do you photograph anything other than dead flowers, distant mountains, or demure maidens? If the answer isn’t YES, YES, SOME, then you are not an original photographer. You are undefined. So very sorry to hear you fading away… like a whisp, a whispering, a whimper.

for another time

Posted on Posted in exs notebook, The In between, TheoryLeave a comment

“I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.”
— John Steinbeck

“People are under the illusion that it’s easy…Technically, it is complex. You have a million options with equipment to distract you. I tell my students to simplify their equipment.”
— Brett Weston

“The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don’t know what to do with it.”
— Edward Weston

“It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.”
— Sam Abell