Do you think a photograph should tell the truth, or does tell the truth, perhaps you think a photograph can lie? If you think it can lie then you also think it can tell the truth— if you think its a lie, that means there is a truth, by definition when lie is defined as not the truth then there is a truth. But can there can be a truth without a lie—for many that is God. Yet for some others the God they believe in needs lies to have meaning for them.
Black & white images are circa 1970 maybe some before, some later.
How to go from one reaction to ten million reactions on a one page ad. Only thing is you hope and pray that the next two pages are not 1) a cacophony of different shades and 2) the paper is opaque. Its different than one day can be more than one million miles, it comes back onto the page.
She was wearing my sweater, kind of cute!!! kawaii!!! かわいい Well, kind of cute in 1968 anyway, maybe she looks old fashioned now. You may think she is beautiful, I just remember there was something I could never talk about with her and I wish I had. Everyone sees different things in a photograph.
Oribe is an old style of Japanese folk pottery—nihon rokkoyo— it comes from Seto/Mino area. In Japanese folk pottery tradition is very important. In the West individual potters are more concerned about expressing their own creative individualism, whatever that means, resulting in a visual cacophony.
A Narumi Oribe chawan.
In Japanese folk pottery individualism is expressed through the tradition. When you see an Oribe chawan made 300 years ago and one made last week, your first feeling is Oribe, and then you (after seeing enough Oribe you will learn to) see the individual potters statement come through.
A Kuro Oribe (black oribe) chawan.
Also from the Seto/Mino area is a Setoguro (black) guinomi by Yamada Hiroshi and Ki-Seto (yellow) tokkuri by Kagami Shugai.
A weary wandering duck, wings ready to fly, free, into the sky, but nowhere to go, lost in the Liangshan Marsh searching for Wu Song to drink the day away.
I made this photo for Model Cities around 1968. Ed Douthet (white shirt, LR) was teaching masonry to these young men in a Model Cities funded program. I went to do the photo shoot and left with a better understanding of the meaning of art and craftsmanship in the everyday objects of my life. While Ed Douthet (white shirt, lr) was teaching these young men he talked about the art of masonry, the meaning it had for people in their everyday lives and how the craftsman needs to work from their heart create that meaning . The Art crafts people bring to our daily lives is as important as the Art in a museum or a gallery and we don’t have to go anywhere special to see it, its in our everyday lives.
I wonder if these some or all of these men knew each other before they joined the program, I wonder if the two men in front are assistant instructors, were “star students” or are there by random. (photo 1969),
Their faces express different feelings
Note on all grade-school teachers: that at best they are exceedingly ill-paid, and have anxiety over their jobs: with all the nervousness of lack of money and of insecurity even in that little: not a good state of mind for a teacher or the young, Nor is the state of mind resulting of sexlessness, or of carefully spotless moral rectitude, whether it be ‘inate’ or or self enforced for the sake the job. Nearly all teachers and clergymen suffocate their victims thought his sterility alone.”
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee (writer) and Walker Evans (Photographer)
Winnings and losings, beginnings and ends always overlapping . ..
Until I could not tell the difference between one and the other. When I was 30 years old Went for three years in art school. I did know if there was going to be place in art for me, but as Gene Scott once said “God did not know if Jesus would fulfill his mission.” If God did not know something that important who am I to doubt about something as unimportant as my life.
Niles California, golden hills, blue skies and green trees, a California part of Fremont where I live, well maybe not really live, I have a house, eat and sleep here and I am still above ground so I guess that qualifies. Niles was where Bronco Billy and some Chaplin films were made.
The Alameda Creek trail, where I walk four miles everyday runs past Beard Rd. East about 5 miles from where I enter the trail is Niles, which makes it a 10 mile round trip so sometimes I drive some where park and then walk.
I believe you have to understand that the camera just shows what it shows. It may sound important to speak of moral shortcomings in photography, but I don’t think they exist.
John Loengard Pictures Under Discussion
What is not included in the photograph is as important as what is included and that is ok. It is not ok when the photograph does not include the photographer’s intention but still if the photographer is true the camera may find something else all on its own.
Compose by what you see or compose by how your eyes feel.
If you expect something from a photograph you may miss what it has to tell you.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.
William Carlos Williams, from the poem Asphodel, That Greeny Flower in Pictures from Breughel and other poems
Then again maybe what a photograph has to tell you is not so important.
My son on the inside looking out, if I remember correctly on that day I felt freer than him.
My aunt and Uncle, a happy moment together a memory care facility . . .
Next, after peeling and slicing the banana with his comb on the wash cloth he arranges parts to make a rectangle on his bed. He was an engineer, graduate of Case.
Daiso, the Japanese store where most everything is $1.50. but its not in competition with the Dollar Store, its got a lot of fun things to both see and buy.
Let us rejoice,
then,
remembering all the grand
(but deserved)
things that somehow
managed to come our way.
Kenneth Patchen Wonderings
When you look at this photograph do you think it should not be me? That this person did not have the right to this body or maybe the body did not earn the right to be this person. Which is the subject, which is the object? Which would you hold dear?
Gate, Gate,
Paragate,
Parasamgate,
Bodhi svaha
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