a multi-disciplinary dialog
Are artists who ignore potential political impact of their work irresponsible? If the work is subject to misinterpretation or misuse (and what isn’t?), is it the job of the artist to consider this in advance? Is self-censorship in the service of your own beliefs necessary?
When I first showed these rock formations I’m calling Bones of the Earth, I was quite unsure what to do with them (I still am…). They seemed to invite a number of treatments. In particular, I found myself wishing I could paint them. Since I’d been admiring Sunil’s paintings of late, I naturally wondered how he might handle them: “Sunil, are you out there? Imagine these rocks as a weathered old face, what would you do with it?” I was not thinking that Sunil would actually see a face in them, but rather that considering the rock surface as skin might suggest coloring and brushwork that would give an interesting treatment. That was before my own musings on the power of face recognition. And if anyone has an over-developed fusiform gyrus in his brain, it’s Sunil (I can barely rotate 90 degrees, he easily does 180). Well, as you can guess, Sunil did see a face there — in fact three — and has recently posted on his blog the painting that resulted. It’s reproduced (with permission) below:
Some weeks ago there was a discussion on this blog about why I don’t photograph people as part of my studies of Manhattan. Since that discussion, I have, of course, become obsessed with photographing people. In case you were looking for an example of how we influence each other on this blog, you now have a very good example.
With all respect for the various and wonderful women of the world, as a man there is an undeniable connection between my brain, my eye and my penis so, not surprisingly as a gay man I have pretty much focused my camera on me…and the streets of Manhattan are chock a block full of beautiful and sexy men. And at the risk of stereotyping and generalizing, as walkers, men and women are very different. Men are going somewhere and they are focused on that–even if it’s nowhere–almost oblivious to there surroundings. Women are observers. They’re moving more slowly and looking at store windows, how other women are dressed, what possible threats there may be to their safety–and if they’re being led by a man, they are never looking forward. It’s actually pretty funny to observe.
I’ve also learned that male Manhattanites are so focused on their “missions” that you can stick a camera up a man’s ass and he’s likely not to notice unless it has a vibration mode–and even then he might mistake it for a passing subway train. As a result I’m loving the ability to capture unposed body language and, more specifically, Manhattan male motion.
Walking up through lush forest
I was struck by something David Palmer said (comment 7) on my recent post on waterfalls:
…there’s something about the waterfalls that really captures for me the change in energy we experience in winter. The actual slowing of molecules. It’s as though by seeing this microcosm we experience something much larger.
Very poetic and all, but beyond that? In any case, it inspired me to think about the water molecules that you could see if you zoomed in with a super-microscope. So I did just that — digitally. The images in the following sequence are waterfall #2 (chosen for its square format) and successive two-fold magnifications of the center of the preceding image (but the actual image display size is reduced by less than that, so they don’t get too small):
Sure the title is a pun I couldn’t resist, but it’s also the lead-in to a serious question about art and perception. It arose in the context of a photography trip to Utah last April, which began in Arches National Park. A few weeks ago, in Bones of the Earth, I made my first post about the project with that tentative title, which comes from the impression that the exposed rocks represent structures normally below the skin of the Earth.
The rock formations in Arches and elsewhere are of many shapes. Among them are ones that can’t help but bring the word phallic to mind. The first picture I took that first morning (first image below) already fit into that category. That’s not why I made the photograph — at least not consciously — but it’s something that occurred to me at roughly the same moment I decided to set up the camera. And although the rock can certainly stand on its own as subject, it’s possible that the subliminal association helped draw my attention to it.
