Wednesday 16 April 2008

It is 6PM, I am racing for the train so that I don’t have to hang around until 9:35 when the next train north leaves. While the temperature doesn’t show it, there is a spring light. There are times when I still need my sunglasses depending on what side of the street I am on.

I am leaving once again reminded what an anachronism I am as I have just come from someone proclaiming that it is irresponsible to do Winogrand type photographs in the early 21st century. It is usually said like this “I like…but to champion him to-day…” It has been a good week for this as someone else mentioned all to embarrassed bobbing heads in the department – that people who call themselves photographers are living the past and are bent on mysticism. I mumble people who call themselves artists are both pretentious and vague. The embarrassed bobbing heads come from their agreement – for it is the proper opinion to have - but the realisation that there I am that dinosaur who does what one isn’t supposed to.

What this would normally have me doing is making Winogrands to spite them. To-day I just pitied them. Walking by the first national bank building there was this beautiful two directional light on the street. It bathed everything in this soft glow that from the direct sun and the light reflecting off the glass façades and back down onto the street from the opposite direction. At times this light would reflect once more off the windows at street level giving this strange theatrical feel remember the first time it was brought to my attention when J B-H was in Chicago and we stood at Randolph and Clark to use the light on the passers-by “you face that way and I’ll face this. It’ll look like we are talking but both can make photographs”.

It didn’t last long. Five minutes? But it made me proud to be an anachronism.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"that people who call themselves photographers are living the past and are bent on mysticism."

That statement is absurd, uninformed, contradictory, and just plain self-involved.

Alissa said...

I get the feeling you like doing what you are not "supposed" to do, and what is wrong with being "bent on mysticism"? Sounds rather nice. I also like when you say people who call themselves artists are "pretentious and vague". Emilie thought I should dump my thesis and write about this one random line she thought thesis worthy. I told Jake and he said that was because it was the vaguest line in the whole paper.

Since I doubt you were talking to GV, perhaps this newness is a hot subject right now (for photography?), in the form of looking 21st century. Seems like artists are limiting themselves more and more and more. So many things we can't do now, it gets rather annoying. Sonya said my green images looked like something in a gardening mag, which I am sure could be true, but that doesn't change the fact there are green plants outside in the world. So I can't make images of them now?

Do you like being called old fashioned because you see it as actually doing/making something or because you are contrary? I don't like it because I don't see that it makes any kind of sense. GV would say it is because I am not aware, and I would say I don't see the point in limitations. Don't we have enough already? Another set of images of mine were compared to those door posters, of course there are no doors in the images, but...