The Written Web

exists, hypertext, however,  not so much .. The written web replaced the blog. The blog was managed by a person who traveled from blog blog by links.. now those written pieces are hosted on commercial space.. you provide the filler to their ads or you buy off the space…

Facebook doesn’t seem to permit the buy off; you will never own any piece of Facebook .. that’s also the path of Reddit..you are filler. . Substack you buy, as you can with WordPress..

The commercial web gave you ease of technical and took away your rights of privacy and profit .. you no longer have control because the technology has control… The things of the world have always been the world; owners of the things , even if they are digital things, own you

TELLING TALES

again and again. Making them taller, making your shadow longer. Done to impress the civilian, the non-participant, the one on the sidelines. Making a grand stand.

The difference between the part-timer and the full-timer. The committed and the interested in getting a story to tell. A tattoo for table talk. These aren’t scars, the are scarves.

Much of this can be seen in all message/gossip boards.. both among the “bro-vets” and the pho-photogs. As much about glorification of their small efforts..

They bought the boots, the perfect laces, compass and map; have taken a course on following course, even going so far as hiring a guide, once. And, now, the laces are knot free, the map is in a drawer, somewhere. 

The online answer boards are the ending gasp of film, chemical lab photography. They wouldn’t believe this. They don’t believe it. How could they be the ones killing what they want to survive. With error. Error of fact. By error of purpose is the greater weight the new would have to overcome. 

In Frank’s West

Cover to uncover… picture making method. Meaning within the frame. Understanding what comes from beyond the frame.

US 91, Leaving Blackfoot Idaho shows two young men picked up by the photographer. Though the men seem intently focussed on the road, the car windows are blank. A text by the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon is in the visor; this Frank had copied down when he visited Dorothea Lange before he set off on his journey to find the heart of America.

one aspect of “reading” for understanding is in your covering items contained within the frame… What is lost

in this instance, it is very difficult to understand the text — it cannot be read .. it is mere squiggle. What would it be?

We have to leave the frame for the content..

That text reads: ‘The contemplation of things as they are/without error or confusion/without substitution or imposture/is in itself a nobler thing/than a whole harvest of invention.’

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/87174/u-s-91-leaving-blackfoot-idaho

For the second half of Dorothea Lange’s life, that quotation from the English philosopher Francis Bacon occupied space within her day. She pinned a printout of those words on her darkroom door in 1933. It remained there until she died, at 70, in 1965 — three months before her first retrospective opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York .

Referenced in publications

proof sheet: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.78965.html

2 possible frames … chose the one without the space between the figures.

same configuration choice in next row of grouped figures.. make the group of one blob.. cluster into single tone pack

Robert Frank’s book, The Americans, is divided into 4 sections. Flags mark the divisions of the book.

  • Flag blowing.. Parade, 1955.. two people “looking” out of windows (First Chapter)
  • Flag hanging over stripe shirt, and… Fourth of July, Jay, New York.
  • Flag as shade… Backyard, Venice West, California.. just two pages after Bar, Detroit.
  • Tuba player… 1956, Political Rally, Chicago (Fourth Chapter)

Robert Frank (b. 1924) traveled across the United States to photograph, as he wrote, “the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere.” During his nine-month journey, he took 767 rolls of film (more than 27,000 images) and made more than 1,000 work prints. He then spent a year editing, selecting, and sequencing the photographs, linking them thematically, conceptually, formally, emotionally, and linguistically. https://www.sfmoma.org/press/release/sfmoma-presents-looking-in-robert-franks-the-amer/