We have asked you on numerous occasions to accept the dimensions and confines of your apparatus, yet you’ve been overheard spouting off about malleable perimeters and frame something-or-other, closing in, tossing out, something, something, something. If this were simply a case (yet again) of a splash too much prosecco at the Photographer’s Holiday Gala, we might be able to let you you off with (yet another) little warning. As it stands, that camel’s back is broken.

You continue to pile shame upon our community and we are left with no other option than to cut you loose, effective immediately. Your desk has already been emptied and its contents are outside in a waiting cab.

Sincerely,
The Administration

Dark matters.

It really does. It’s our natural state before the light find us. It’s a quiet, lonely place that doesn’t always mind being quiet and lonely. Dark is defined by what it’s not: it’s simply the absence of light. So if we slip these thoughts to theoretical physics and the concept of dark matter, how might we define it now? We can’t easily do that, but we can try. What is it?

Uh, is it?

We think so. By we, I mean them: the theoretical physicists. Since I said theoretical and not hypothetical, we can agree the physicists exist, which is already more than we can say about dark matter. What does it do? It does stuff to stuff. Things out in space, like constellations, act as if something is messing with their gravity in the way that matter would do. What’s the matter? Dunno, it’s dark. It must be matter, but a special kind. Why can’t we see it? It’s dark, like I said! It makes sense to say that the particles do not emit or scatter light, but they do have mass. Mass that messes with stuff.

So what’s the matter? Dark.

What does it look like? Keith Taylor thought he’d take a stab at it. Deep underground in an idle northern Minnesota iron mine, scientists at the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II lab are trying to figure this out. Keith took photographs inside and around the mine, and you can see the gorgeous results at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts through January 24, 2012, or here at Keith’s web site.

This is a boxed collection of 20 rich, inky photogravures and letterpress text that imagine what dark matter might look like if we could easily see it. We need artists to figure these things out. We are the heavy lifters.

Today I’m pleased to announce that one of my photographs is released for sale with the 20×200 project. It’s a mate to one released several months ago, and is a color tree study. I hope you like it.

So how does a black and white photographer make the jump to color? I shot these as an experiment to see if, and how, I could shift my usual monochrome palette from greys to greens. Gardens are a favorite subject of mine, but not for the usual reasons. For one, I’m not actually interested in color per se, as it distracts my eye from much more complicated concerns of form, volume, and texture. I’m also not remotely interested in flowers, except when they are wrapped in cellophane and ceremoniously presented to me. Flowers rarely appear in my work, and also rarely appear in my own garden. The wonderful Susan Burnstine recently interviewed me, where I explained that I love gardens in part because they are “equal parts fable, sex, and silence.” They are.

Americans have a narrow and peculiar understanding of gardens that is not shared by other nationalities. We (ok, so not all of us) don’t understand that the history of gardens is as old as us. Just do an internet search for “garden history” if you don’t believe me (and don’t tell me you didn’t believe me). There are all kinds of art, and there are all kinds of gardens. The typical American planting of bitsy, ankle- to knee-high flowers, all color, romance, and sentiment, is as interesting as the wares at a suburban strip mall arts and crafts sale. Please understand that there is a rich and varied history of garden making that blends formal aspects of design with human exploits of wealth, war, politics, intrigue, mystery, religion, and sex, and no less so than the rest of the history of art. These are powerful, complicated places, and that power has nothing to do with petty aspects of pretty flowers and sun bonnets.

And, so, the color thing.

My experiment with color in these photographs is all about photography, and not at all concerned with the beauty of botanical specimens. When I shoot a garden in black and white, I’m aiming to suggest a space of complicated forms, textures, and perspectives that can let my mind wander, and wonder, about what activities might take place in such an environment. I’ve always believed that color would distract from these broader issues, making the photographs too descriptive and specific. So is it possible to use color in a way that works more like monochrome? Yes I think so, but that’s because I selected a landscape that was already monochrome for the most part! In this case, the “chrome” happens to be green.

This is Not an Atlas, Photographs by Warren Hutchinson and Nick Foster, 2004

Riley and His Story, Photographs by Monica Haller, 2009

The top image is only a fragment of the cover of This is Not an Atlas. The similarities between the two whole covers are striking. I’m seeing more of this lately, as I have been thinking about text.

My last post, Material Witness, discussed the pre/post dynamics involved in photographic choices, Paul Graham’s now-famous thoughts on the subject, and their relation to the Market. I have been thinking about this subject lately because my work is currently included in a relevant exhibition.

Matt Peiken of 3 Minute Egg just posted this nice little video of this exhibition, at IFP in St. Paul. The Imperfect Image: The Art of the Handcrafted Print includes work by Keith Taylor, Osama Esid, and myself, that integrates content and process. This exhibition was curated by Vance Gellert as a way to draw attention to the possibilities of fine printmaking, and how process can be an important part of art.

Osama Esid is showing work from two portfolios that reference the history and forms of both earlier photography and orientalism to document street life in the Middle East. Please check out his web site because I love his work. He lives in Minneapolis and is originally from Damascus, Syria.

Keith Taylor chose photographs printed in gelatin silver, platinum, and photogravure to show how their rich tones and surfaces support his images. While Keith is an amazing photographer, he is also a first-rate master printer. The. Best. He prints for other photographers, and makes all of my platinum-palladium prints. He printed the selections from my Ruins portfolio that are in this exhibition.

By the way, 3 Minute Egg is a video project by Matt Peiken that covers the art scene of the Twin Cities. Please check it out and give him your support.

So a girl can’t even step away from a blog for a bit without things getting crazy. The (wonderful) Paul Graham said some things about the current state of photography and I can still feel the aftershocks. I could post links here, but you’re going to have to just Google them. Here’s my take. Photographers who are mostly interested in what happens before the shutter snaps, let’s call them Pre, are the Good Guys. I’m not one of them. Sets, model makers, models, lights, anything that can be planned, positioned, controlled, rented, or scripted, will put you on the path toward righteousness. We can count among them those who use extensive digital post-production as well, because that entire process still occurs before the simple click that sends the file to a machine that will print it. We know who they are, and often admire their work. They are stars.

Photographers who care most about the un-directed image, the Snaps, respond to the world as it is, with their cameras as tools of capture. Like snares. Paul Graham could be called one of them, and I think curators and critics do have an unusually difficult time understanding that work for the reasons Graham describes. Is it enough to just aim a camera and press a button? Well yes, because the little three-letter word “aim” is deceptively simple and twinkling with magical powers. Anyone can snap a shutter, but it takes a true master to show us something different, mysterious, wrong, dangerous, or humorous with that snap. It’s most certainly not effortless, and most certainly not a lesser art. Photographers know this, but are not often enough the curators, gallerists, or critics.

Pity now, for a moment, poor little Post. Where pink-cheeked Pre carefully and elaborately poses the world in front of the lens and is richly rewarded by Market, Museum, and Press, Post has a much more complicated task. Like Snap, she responds to the world as it is. She accepts what it gives her, but then chews it up and messes with it a bit. For her, the photograph is an artifact with a physical nature, and the print is important. It really is. If our bodies are our temples, then our prints are our, ah, well they’re important. They mean something. They are physical manifestations of the effects of light on metal, chemical reactions, brush strokes, jiggles of the dev tray. Photography is still light-writing for dear little Post, and she knows the process doesn’t end with the click of the shutter. It begins.

Load. Aim. Shoot. Photographers are scary, and if you’re snapping pictures in Britain you might want to pay a lawyer to schlep your equipment. Much has been said recently about the capricious bullying by police of photographers in public spaces, and a recent protest in Trafalgar Square helped bring the issue to the general public. British police have been invoking Section 44 of the Terrorism Act to stop people on the street who are armed with cameras and Look Suspicious. Well, don’t we all? Please watch this footage for a first-hand encounter with The Law. I lived in London for many years, and much of my work had bits of people passing through the image frames. My tactic was to act like a tourist and pretend I was focusing on something else. The camera I use now, a Fuji 6×7, says Professional in large white letters across the front, and while I’m grateful for its confidence in me, I don’t know if it means I look less, or in fact more, suspicious. If you are planning a trip to England and will be taking pictures of any kind, please know that the police might not like the look of you, and might like to make this perfectly clear.

The Metropolitan Police released the above poster in 2008 and I have desperately coveted one ever since. Do you seem odd? Pretty sure I do. I promise a nice little gift to the first person who can get me one of those posters.

I know that doctors and other crisis workers have developed ways to cope with trauma so they can push aside emotions and get to work, and that we rely on photographers to show us the scale of such devastation so we can make better-informed choices. It’s just difficult to see how Mr. Miller can ask for $16,000 for a single week’s work in Haiti, without any mention of how that money will be used. Sure, it’s his income, and he can spend it as he wishes. The four lucky workshop participants might feel that is a good use of their money and time, and it may be a win-win situation. Is it the cost of the workshop that doesn’t sit right with me? I don’t know if that’s the case, because it seems like it would be troubling even if he offered his advice and companionship for free. I hope photojournalists who are in Haiti right now are rolling up their sleeves and pitching in, and that any others planning a trip there will be prepared to do the same. I assume that is exactly what is happening, and that, from the start, workshop participants assume they will also be helping in disaster relief. While we hear and read about unimaginable tragedies from the comfort and safety of our living rooms, we need photographers to do some of the hard work of gathering and transmitting images. These photographers need to learn their craft somewhere, somehow, and maybe this is how it is done.

In his great blog Conscientious, Joerg Colberg expanded his earlier examination of perceived plagiarism in photography, and it raises some interesting points. As a photographer of the land, however, I might have a different angle on this discussion, both literally and figuratively. I’m currently working on a set of books that reference Victorian photographs of antique ruins and monuments. In my online research, I quickly saw a basic problem.

That scenic overlook is clearly crowded, and while I generally run a bit cynical, or perhaps just skeptical, I don’t hold the automatic assumption that similar photographs are, without question or exception, plagiarism. When I followed Joerg’s link here, I could see why: I, too, have long-shots of tiny people on beaches (English beaches, come to think of it), people on benches looking at Nature (craploads of these), winding, precarious paths going up (and down) hills, and people on a snowy peak  - and at a golf course, even. Snow, and I live in Minneapolis!

I think this discussion is most interesting when it addresses intention and coincidence. Many of us work alone, often developing ideas and projects over several years. Decades, even. If several bodies of work come to light at the same time, with startlingly similar images and techniques, it’s entirely possible that it’s simple coincidence. That’s not a juicy explanation, but it happens a lot. A strip of buildings between water and sky can only be photographed two ways: color, or black and white. Now, of course, the color can be saturated or pale, and the buildings can be romantic and quaint, or industrial. We can make our choices. Would you prefer a Granny Smith or a Bramley apple? Both green, both apples. There is really only a problem when you remove the annoying little Granny Smith stickers and put them on the Bramleys because they’re a lot cheaper. It’s dishonest, and dishonesty is the bastard child of ill intent.

I try to keep up, I really do, but every so often I’ll run across a body of work that everyone else seems to know but I’ve never seen before. Or even heard of. That happens to all of us, and often. I’m not sure how else Steven Meisel could have shot the Dogging pictures if they weren’t at night, with flash, just like Kohei Yoshiyukis’s The Park. I’d be interested to hear from regular reviewers at venues like Review Santa Fe, Photolucida, or Fotofest. I’m sure they have witnessed the sudden appearance of new, identical themes, subjects, and processes cropping up, seemingly from nowhere. Did Jung have anything to say about the contemporary photography market? Can we pretend he did?

I started this post with a music reference in the title, so I’ll end with another. As I said before, I’m a Minneapolis girl, and if you know much about music, you will know The Replacements. I’ve been a huge fan for 25 years. Check out Art Brut’s great song, called “The Replacements” where Eddie Argos is aghast. He can’t BELIEVE he’s only just discovered The Replacements. Cracks me up every time I hear it.