The Word

I had a long discussion the other day with some grad students about working process. We were discussing the balance between conscious and unconscious thought in the studio. A question comes up quite often to those of us working in the studio – What are you researching? Art as research is a relatively new phenomenon, at least within the long history of the arts, and one that gets a lot of attention these days. Of course there has always been some level of research involved, but these days it has come to play a very central role in the working process. This research tends to bind some of us up in the studio. We become very conscious of all of the research we have done and then it becomes very hard to create.

So where does the unconscious mind enter into the picture? There has to be a time when you let go of all of the research and just work without thinking about it. Now I am not saying that you should let go of everything you have learned in your research, but instead just let it take a backseat. It is not as if that knowledge has left your head and you are now working without any borders or anchors. It still exists. You just can’t let it dictate how you work all of the time.

A few years back when I was working on my On The Edge project I spent endless hours in the library, on the Internet, and looking at everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with our incessant need for growth as an economic driver. I studied civic planning, economic development, and the history of the subdivision among many other things. When I went out to photograph I had to learn to let all that go and just work. I had to clear my mind and let the pictures happen. The more I tried to relate the images to some preconceived notion of what I was trying to say the less my images said. It was only when I could go out into the sprawl, clear my mind, and just photograph, that the images started to mean something.

Now I can’t say that this method will work for everyone, but there has to be moments of sheer play and unconscious experimentation in your work habits if you are to move forward. This became very clear in our group discussion the other day. When we became to wrapped up in our research our views got more narrow and we were not free to create. Most of us admitted to something along the lines of “writer’s block” when we became to focused.

So how do you let go?

Want to explode your head like in the movie Scanners? Try reading Bill Jay’s Occam’s Razor and Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others at the same time. I personally believe that some college professors just like to stir the pot just for the fun of it. Someday I’ll give you my opinion on both of the books. Personally I am more of a fan of Bill Jay, but it is sometimes hard to argue with ol’ Susie.

I must admit I am truly lazy when it comes to getting work out there to the online forum these days. I have been so focused on making work that I haven’t really had the impetus to do much beyond that. After four hours of dust spotting scan on any given day my energy tends to wane a bit. Having said that I did get off my arse to send some work in to F-Stop magazine for their portrait issue. I have four photos in the group show this issue, three of which are so new they are not even on my website. Stop by and check out the issue as there is some great work up from a lot of great photographers. http://www.fstopmagazine.com/home.html

Ahhh the dreaded rejection. The letter comes in the mail (or email) and you open the thing carefully hoping for good news. Then you read the one page cold-hearted letter stating that there was 800 applicants for 12 positions and even though your work was stellar, you still are not going to get the brass ring. I recently received a letter just like this rejecting me from a fellowship from an unnamed organization for the second year in a row.

So what next? Curl up in a ball on the couch with a gallon of ice cream and a romantic comedy? Put your fist through a cheap door? How about a drunken stupor where you rant to anyone who will listen how stupid they are for not accepting your work? (that is my personal favorite by the way) Or do you just quietly stick the letter in the recycling bin and get back to work?

Well, it is probably time to get back to work. The first thing I do is call in someone to look at the work and make sure that I wasn’t crazy for sending it in in the first place. Step two, look at the work and re-edit the hell out of it. Try different sequences and see what you could have done better. Step three, look at the artists who did get in and get a feel for what the judges were looking for. This is also something to do before you send your work in as well. Make sure your work is right for what you are applying for and who is judging it. Step four, make more work. Don’t stop. Try new things. Try it from different angles, with different concepts, and everything else you can think of until you get it right.

Last, but certainly not least, do not panic. Everyone gets rejected. It is how many times you reflect and come back from rejection that really makes a good body of work. Many of us had the luxury and training of college and graduate art critiques to toughen our skin before going out into the real world. For those of you who didn’t try and find a local or online critique group that you can take part in. I promise your work will be better for it.

Well almost. I started adding the atrocious amount of links to other great artists into my website today. I have been putting it off for a while now. Stop by and check some of them out. I’ll see if I can get the other 300 or so added in the next couple of years….

I ask myself that very question on a regular basis. I have a hard time letting go of a project and drawing a line in the sand that designates the end of one thing and the beginning of the next. Most of my photo projects are unfinished and I will continue to work on them in the future. Like a river they all just seem to flow into the next and become part of something larger. A few are finished. Signs of Life was finished the day that Google started adding in watermarks all over Google Earth. Richard and Thelma is near completion as my grandparents are about to move out of their home of 40 years and into my aunt’s house due to their failing health. However, both of those are considered finished because of outside influences and not because of my own decision making process.

So as you can see I have a problem. Or maybe it isn’t a problem at all. Who is to say a project can’t just keep going on? Why do we need do draw definitive lines? Is it the nature of the photographic beast? So then the next question is, when is the work ready to show? That is a question that I don’t yet have an answer for. One of my past mentors would never show work until they were clearly done with the project and already into their next one. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that philosophy. I am currently working on a project that I don’t know if it will ever have an end to it and I am in the process of putting the work out there for the public now. As it continues to grow over time I am sure it will morph into something bigger and hopefully better, but I don’t think I should wait until 30 years from now when the project is officially “finished” to put the work out there.

So when is a project finished? I think when you lose interest in your subject matter then it is time to move on. When the act of going out and photographing for the project becomes a chore then it is probably time to take a good look at it and possibly move on. For myself, generally, I have a hard time moving on to the next because I rarely lose interest in a project. In a way most of my projects are all related to each other and focus in on the same basic idea, so technically speaking, they are never really finished and they are all just part of one continuous exploration for something I may never actually be able to capture. That doesn’t mean that I won’t keep trying though.

My bookmark list for photo and art blogs used to have well over two hundred blogs on it. It is now down to twelve after I just deleted two more today. Why you may ask? To tell you the truth, much like Facebook, I was no longer getting anything out of them. Many used to post interesting work and opinions. I no longer look at blogs that post others work. Many do so without permission of the artist which is a form of theft in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I have done it in the past as well, but I no longer do so unless it happens to be an event flyer that turns you onto a new show or gallery. Many others only post their cohorts work and it literally goes round and round in circles until I begin to believe that there are only about 200 hundred or so photographers out there. As for interesting opinions… well…

Now it may seem odd that I am writing, or more aptly, complaining about something while doing the very thing I am complaining about. The truth is – it is odd. Why keep writing something if I don’t believe in the power of it anymore? Actually I do believe in the power of the word, it is just that these days I have very little time on the side for writing as an underpaid (or not paid) position. Making new work, getting a graduate degree, working, and taking care of a six month old is quite capable of filling my time.

I think many of the blogs out there in the ether world of the Internet were started for very good reason and then like me many discovered that it was another job that we didn’t have the time for. Some now lay defunct like the garbage in a Burtynsky photograph while others just post guest written filler that amounts to nothing but self indulgent blabber and doesn’t add much to the conversation at all. Some have cashed in their chips and rolled their success into something bigger. Good for you. For some people the blog was simply an inflation device for their ego. Either way it got old quickly for them too.

I can’t remember the exact reason I started writing this blog. I do remember having a genuine interest in passing on interesting shows and bits of my working process to others which is what I continue to do, albeit at a varied pace these days. I also get the chance to rant every once in a while, which if you know me personally, I do on quite a regular basis. I am a huge fan of expressing my disgust with injustice. But I also started this to help others along the way. I have a genuine interest in helping others and moving the photographic world another step forward. It is the reason I chose teaching as a profession. It was the reason I sat down with David to start Fraction magazine a few years back. That experiment didn’t quite pan out the way I had in mind so I moved on to other pastures, but luckily David continued on to keep it alive.

So where does the blog go from here? Hopefully the future of the blog involves a new iteration of the comments section. That has failed to evolve into anything more than a bathroom wall in a truck stop as far as opinions and new knowledge goes. Even lively discussions have often turned into mud throwing and trolling insults as of late.

More importantly what can we learn from blogs in the future? Or more succinctly, what would I like to see from blogs in the future? I would like to see more of fellow artists work in progress and their working process. I would like to see more community form that isn’t just interested in promoting each other, but in truly forming community that benefits each other and one where true friendships form. I would like to see more open and honest dialogue about the future of photography as art and a viable business. I don’t even mind seeing tutorials on being a better photographer etc, just realize that if you are in the business of photography you are giving away your knowledge for free and creating armies of competition for yourself. What would I like to see less of? Less shameless self-promotion. Less commercial product placement. ( I don’t care what photo bag you use) And most of all less filler.

Seriously? All you have to do is be careless and place your camera in precarious situations and then post the video? Wow. Marketing has really taken a dive. I know tons of talented individuals out there who could use a free camera and they can actually promise to make some compelling work. And that is my question for the day. What is good marketing? Apparently to some it is giving away things to popular videos. In terms of money, it is a good marketing strategy. A half a million views give or take and your name plastered on it. But what about responsible marketing? What about putting free equipment into the hands of some people who need it and want to make a difference? What about free equipment for people to use to get their voice heard around the world? Imagine putting the cameras into the hands of young people living in poverty to let them document their world for everyone else to see. Don’t get me wrong there are a few people doing this, but for the most part we don’t hear about it. Instead we get cameras being destroyed making stock footage.

On a lighter marketing note, I deleted my Facebook account today. Now that may seem very strange to most of you marketing geniuses out there, but honestly I think my time can be much better spent. I don’t care who ate a bagel with whom and I haven’t checked my account on more than a weekly basis in months. I would much rather spend my time having real conversations with people face to face or actually working on my craft and my art.

BTW has anyone else noticed that the death of the blog is nigh?

I recently received and email from a gallery that I will leave unnamed. The email went something like this…

We saw your work on your website and we absolutely love it. We would love to have your work in our gallery. Please email us for more info or visit our site to learn more about us…

This seemed a little odd to me. I have helped other artists get gallery representation and have talked to other galleries about showing my work, but never have I seen the whole process initiated through the email. Usually it starts with a phone call or a face to face conversation at an event. Never the less, I was already sensing some sort of come on so I immediately began to research the email. As far as I can tell, I am one of the only people I know who has received this email. I asked around to see if it was a mass email. If it came your way too, I would love to hear from you.

Upon reviewing the gallery and their website I discovered their business model and the “artist representation fees” that I would be required to pay. Basically $3500 a year. For that price an artist gets work hung in what sounds like group shows, space on the gallery website, various promotional materials, and a 70/30 split with the gallery.

Now I realize that this is a perfectly good business model for a gallery these days. They make some money either way without having to gamble on final sales. As an artist $3500 a year is a little steep for me with no return guarantee. I mean, I would have to sell a few pieces before I even saw anything remotely resembling a return on my investment. I suppose there are lots of people out there who would be ready and willing to put this on their resume and run with it. But what will they get besides another line on their resume? What, if any, are the proven financial track records of galleries such as this? Will this gallery be around in five years or even two years? These are the kinds of questions anyone serious about gallery representation should be asking themselves. If you are truly wanting gallery representation or a book deal or whatever other success benchmark you can think of, then do your homework and get down to some serious business. Find every galley you can that represents the kind of work that you make. I once went through a list of almost 5,000 galleries for an artist to narrow it down to 100 galleries that he might fit in. From there we went on to create very slick marketing packets of his work and shipped them off to the top 50 or so. After all that he got two bites and ended up in one of the galleries with interest for the future from the other one. It didn’t cost $3500. It cost a lot less than that and the gallery does a great job promoting and selling the work.

Stop and ask yourself – what is success as an artist for me personally? Don’t get hung up on the traditional models of success like gallery representation. I have known quite a few artists who had gallery representation and found it more trouble that it was worth. Rarely was their work sold and the investments of printing, framing, and shipping the work were never recouped. Make your own version of success and make art because you love it – not just because you need an ego boost.

Today I finally got somewhat caught up on the ol’ blog here. This is of course its third incarnation since 2007 and I finally got some of the backlogged articles from the other versions onto this one. I am now as far back as 2008 and I hope to get it all the way back to the beginning one of these days. I’ll get that done right after I finally add in the 300 or so links I have to put up on my website. Mañana compadre.

On a side note I have also been catching up in the darkroom the past couple of months and making new work. That is correct and your eyes are working fine – I did say darkroom. I have been working in black and white over the past year or so and developing my own film for a project I have been working on. Now why many of you may ask “Why the fuck would you waste your time in the darkroom?” I also think many of you know the answer. Digital, while it is a speedy and useful tool for cranking out a plethora of images, is not how I generally work when I am immersed in a project. I am slow and methodical.

I have also been working quite a bit in large format. Setting up the camera gives me the time to think about what I am doing and especially useful for portraits. It gives me the time to chat with the subject and get them comfortable in front of the camera. After 20 minutes or so, most people settle into the experience and become completely different people in front of the camera. One of my favorite images of all time was made because my camera lens was malfunctioning and after an hour of fiddling with it and talking to the subject we had this amazing final moment when the shutter clicked. You can see in the photo of Ralph below what I am talking about. He started out completely nervous and fidgety, but after he read me some poetry he had been working on and told me about having rickets as a child we were on a completely different level. Ralph was almost in tears when I brought him a framed copy about a month later. His exact word were – “This is me”