Painting, and to a lesser extent, “image-making”, is the one act I do regularly that feels entirely apart and absurd compared to the doings and un-doings of each waking moment of my regular, paint-free life. In addition, painting is very often—but not always—an act I am more comfortable performing than any other. By comfortable, I mean that in the moment I am wrestling with what I see, or mindlessly acting upon those thoughts, I can achieve a sense of contentment. I am not wasting my time, all of this will contribute to something that lasts. Keep reading…
Filling space
Today, for the first time in more than a year, I finished a painting. In the last two weeks I’ve been defining my routine in the new studio, and it’s very satisfying to see positive results. I’ve been able to slip in and out for as little as ten minutes at a time, or as much as five hours. But every day, I’m able to spend time. Devoting a room of one’s own to nothing but his daily reveries is one of the most intriguing things a human can do in 2009. Having been without that pleasure for a while, I’m relishing the simplest aspects of it. I actually enjoy the ten-step walk in the yard from the house, and the piqued interest of my wife, as she peeks in. One day, I may wish for something more apart or private or spacious, but right now the mere ability to work every day is enthralling. It’s already certain, my seventh studio is the best one yet.
After all, what goes on in such a place, or what should, does not require that the place be miles from civilization, or sweeping in scale. No, I would posit that it needs only be perfect in the eyes of its maker. A place where things can happen, a box to hide and see from.
Beginning with good and bad
The New York Times has been consistently upping the ante with interactive features for the last couple years. Lately, they’ve been taking their photo essays more seriously, presumably to compete with the likes of The Big Picture and other oft-visited photo editorials. The 2008 Year in Pictures feature was particularly powerful, with an elegant use of full-screen scaling.
The quality of these photo features, however, hasn’t been consistent. Examples of either end of the spectrum are below. The use of audio in the Great Performers feature (a portfolio complied for the Oscar issue of the New York Times Magazine) is seamless and enhancing.
Paolo Pellegrin / Magnum Photos, for The New York Times
But the added slickness to these web portfolios is just that, added. The photos themselves, (judged as portfolios, pieces of a whole) aren’t always great. Sometimes they’re entirely great. In the feature shown above, Paolo Pellegrin spent part of a day following each chosen actor in the setting of their choosing, be it at home or on the move. The results are stunning. Motifs re-appear (the close-up eyes of an actor behind windshield glass, for example), but they aren’t stilted, they’re rich and rewarding.
In the future, I’ll be spending more time writing about the idea that something visual can be “good” or “bad,” and that these terms are actually well-suited to the visual conversation, contrary to educated belief. (I’ve got a lot of pent up thoughts about taste and seeing, subjects I think most people fail to consider properly.) Until then, and for future reference, this is an example of something that is “good.” And I mean that in just the way that it sounds. These are good photos. They are nice. Horse-shit way of talking about art, yes, usually. But not always. “Good” and “nice” have failed to mean something for so long that they’re actually quite meaningful things to say now, in my view, if said with thought.
Nadav Kander / The New York Times
And now the bad. There are plenty of reasons the above feature (on Obama’s People) leaves a funny taste in my mouth (funny bad). For one, It’d be nice if the New York Times weren’t so unabashedly giddy about Obama (so unabashed, in fact, that they put together the feature above, which is sloppy, ill-considered, and ugly), because they put together a solid news site. But I’ll leave the political/newsyness questions for later. Just looking at this feature, the judgement is immediate. Bad.
I think it takes courage on the part of a photographer, or his or her editor, to realize that though the originating concept may have been intriguing, the proper results never came. That would of course mean spending money, and time, and capital (these are important people being photographed after all), and still choosing to discard the project once its flaws were apparent. Not only is the clinical white-background sterilization of subject over-done, it’s done better elsewhere (Errol Morris). The fact that something has “been done” is too often referred to as a reason not to do it (not true, as everything has been done). But when something has consistently “been done” better, and recently, it seems a poor choice to try.
Someone should have noticed immediately that these photos weren’t telling or compelling portraits. The technique is so unconsidered (the given explanation for the photographer’s method sounds like a studentish afterthought) that the figures appear to be Photoshopped on a white background, with a bland drop-shadow to boot. By that fact they seem cheap, quick, and silly. When left with those words as the summation of my experience, I return to the feeling I mentioned toward the beginning…that perhaps the project was just that. Cheap, quick, silly. Not simply in technical terms, but also in the political sense. A big, fast, bold orgasm of mania for the newly elected. A spasm of Bad.
Hi.
First, you will notice that the entry below this one was written a very long time ago. It’s been a while. I’m rusty. I’ve been meaning and wanting to make this thing for so long that I’m no longer sure just what I intend for it to be. In a different way, it is much like the first time, five years ago. I’m just going to see where it takes me.
With that in mind, I’m still working on a few things. Most of it, in fact, is not quite ready for prime time. I’m still remembering (and learning) how to do this, which is true of most things I do. Last time around, I had a world class designer help me code it all into being. This time it’s just me behind the curtain.
Despite all this sheepishness, I can offer a few facts and promises. I wanted a central “place” to show off what it is I do, when I do it. A long time ago, I enjoyed writing very much. At the time I believed I was good at it, and so I was willing to publish what I wrote online. It has been so long that I must reassess these feelings. However my goal is to stick to what I’m good at, and to get even better. Last time around that meant writing things down and making pictures. I doubt I’ll stray much from that design this time. We’ll see.
Night Falls, Illinois
On Saturday my boss and I drove across the river to the sad sad state of Illinois. We met an artist, did this and that, and had a few beers. Driving through steel towns so sleepy ugly flat it’d take a Wichitan to see something special, my east-coast boss looked at me and said “it sure is something to see.” I agreed in a fashion that surprised him, in way he might’ve expected. “Yeah I love it out here, I reserve Illinois for drives that are quiet, or sad.” He nodded his head and curled a half grin. “You a, you’re sort of a voluntary loner huh?” Sure, I thought, if that’s what it’s called.
In the summer of 1992, my family in full took to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where fool’s gold still sells hot and Hollidomes keep each other company. Past all that, in the deeper hills, far from Rushmore, there runs a river with trout through evergreens and quiet places. In celebration of Lucille’s willingness to somehow, some way, stay by my dad’s dad’s side for fifty years, on the arid ranch no less, we picnicked and scampered by that cold clear river.
Though moments and memories from that reunion blink and run, I can remember one hour with crystal vision. From one moment to the next, our picnic turned from a sun-streamed firmament to cold darting sprinkles that promise a hard summer rain fast coming. The subfamilies were scattered, and the countless giggling testaments to an old couple’s abiding and fertile love dashed and jumped inside an assortment of mini-vans. We threw ourselves inside and rolled the old sliding door shut.
Quiet and obedient kid that I was, I found myself in the back of my parents’ van. Sitting ahead were two of my sisters, my older cousin Peter, my dad and my aunt Bettie Lou. Peter had dark brown skin and was both older and taller than all the other children. I didn’t understand this, but I didn’t ask. In my entire life, I never saw him much. My young memory of him is that he was both agreeable and happily kind.
The vanity plates on either side of our American outfit called our ride the Bingvan, and painfully, so did we. As the Bingvan gathered speed, and we dove into the curving black ribbon through the steep forest hills, the rain came hard and speaking, like something from the bible or my dreams. One of my sisters petitioned my father for the playing of a tape, and in seconds all six of us were listening without complaint to a dubbed tape with the word Enya on it twice. Twelve eyes fixed on the mighty outdoors rushing.
My custom then, as an eternally willing passenger, was to lean my forehead out to the window’s surface and let my big skull rattle. That way I could see the passing wonder without any vision or thought of the vessel that took me on. I could act as though I was wind or a presence I can’t name. It was, and always has been an imagination fed by eyes open, not closed. I hope by seeing. I draw by watching. I pray by looking.
In that magic wet moment, doused in white rain and an early-nineties Enya drumtrack, I am certain that for once each person around me knew the glory I was always looking for. We were each quiet, even Rachelle, even Bettie Lou. When a loud and twitching thunderclap begged us to speak Peter opened his mouth first, slow and with belief.
“It’s so great.”
For the first time, I turned my head inward to see him and the others. It is for that moment alone that I appreciate the stranger that is my adopted cousin Peter. It is for that moment alone, that I remember him. Each of the others, even the old folks up front had smiles and slow nods with nothing to add. We were just kids, and we knew it. But for that long moment we were old souls, young and smiling. I wanted to laugh and cry at once, to make music with my chest.
Tonight, for the second night in a row, I drove to Illinois to watch the sky turn from pink to midnight. Through towns called Bellevue and Waterloo, where the trees tower above the empty spaces, black and abundant. I used to listen to music, to massage my head toward the road. But now I’ve taken to the noise of nothing but the small incessant rattles of an aging car just going. To let the ride be the quietest event it can be, while still racing through darkened fields. It is no silence, but it must be like the flapping solitude a high bird finds flying.
Tonight I leaned the side of my head toward the window in an aching search for that Black Hills moment. Each time I crawl inside something that moves I am searching for that moment. In my sleep I want the feeling. In these words I want it channeled. My heart breaks each day for that cheesy gorgeous moment I can only find in pieces. Among other things, I told it again, slow like the first time. Maybe even slower. It’s just so great.