Panchromatica

The first rule of blogging

...is of course to keep posting, which is something I have singularly failed to do. It isn't just here. My Flickr and Ipernity accounts are also languishing from lack of attention.  I haven't been idle though. I have  been working on a much longer piece than I normally post here, and also working at getting out and about selling my pictures. I have something like 30 art or craft fairs booked between now and the end of the year and I am also promoting my work much more actively.

The fairs are useful on two counts - they give me a place to sell, but they also lead to increased exposure. Even so it is hard work. Most people going to craft fairs expect to find jewellery perhaps, textiles and knitted products, perhaps wood. They don't I think expect to find art or photography. Consequently you need a high footfall to stand a chance of making significant sales.

I really would like to see more such fairs with the primary focus on art. The downside is that you don't get the people who would never go to a gallery and are just looking for a pretty picture to hang on their wall. I'm not proud - if that is what you want I will sell it!

Anyway - here are the next few fairs I will be attending. If you are in the area, please pop in and say hello - discount for anyone producing a print out of this article.

Monday May 26^th - Cleeve House, Seend near Devizes (also Jewellery) - 10.00 am to 4.00 pm

Saturday Jun 7^th - Southampton Bargate Art Market - 9.00 am to 4.00 pm

Sunday Jun 15^th - Lacock - Village Hall - 11.00 am onwards

Sunday Jun 22^nd - Alton, Hampshire - Art Market – High Street - 9.00 am to 2.00 pm

Saturday Jun 28^th - Tetbury Market Hall - 10.00 am to 4.00 pm

Saturday Jul 5^th - Bath - Craft in the Crypt - St Michael’s Church, Broad Street, Bath BA1 5LJ - 9.00 am to  4.00 pm

Sunday Jul 20^th - Lacock - Village Hall - 11.00 am onwards

Sunday Jul 27^th- Alton, Hampshire -  Art Market – High Street - 9.00 am to 2.00 pm

500 years of women's portraits

A beautiful YouTube video (thanks Ronni)

Group Show

I'm taking part in this group show. Please pop along and have a look if you are in the area.

January 12th - February 8th 2008
The Gallery
16 High Street
Pewsey

Map here

Towards a living art - a digital manifesto

Digital tools can make Art that is accessible; Art that everyday people can afford to take home and live with, and discard when they want to move on to something new. "Archivability" is a scam...a way to exclude...a lame excuse to charge more money. We can't possibly know that any one of us is making artwork that someone will want to pull out of an hermetically sealed drawer in five hundred years. Digital artwork is much more akin to the Japanese print makers of the 1700 and 1800s. No one questioned if those prints were going to last three hundred years. Those colorful, masterful, fast moving commodities served a different purpose all together...a living purpose. A purpose that was inextricably bound to expanded creative and commercial bandwidth brought about by new tools and techniques. The market for those prints roared with the life of mass approval not exclusion based on price or snobbish philosophy. This is where a Manifesto of Digital Art should carry us.

I liked this bit too:

Like all good manifestos our's must call for the death of something or other. Usually, this death is wished upon an oppressor or an oppressive idea. I can think of no greater oppression than the concept of "limited editions". One of the things nailed into your head while attending the finer art schools is that the artist owes it to buyers, agents and your future estate to limit your output of a certain image. The argument usually is that too many copies drives down the prices and scares off your "investors". But, who really profits from this? Not the artist. This is the art agents' way of guaranteeing that after you die everyone else will profit.

and this:

If I were to guess as to how future art critics might describe this period in the development of digital media and the effect it will have on the world of Fine Art, I might venture to say; "The turn of the new century was a heady and revolutionary period in the development of Art that saw, through the introduction of digital tools, a great democratization in art making and began a period of time wherein the cracks in the dam of the traditional Fine Arts world began to show."

Pass the dynamite.

Serenity and Libertarianism

For some bizarre reason, the film Serenity (and its TV series precursor - which I haven't seen yet) have been claimed as 'libertarian'.  For those who haven't seen it, the film is centred on  the exploits of the crew of a space ship led by a veteran of an interplanetary civil war (on the losing side).

The film opens with a bank robbery, in a scene recalling 'The Wild Bunch', although as one commenter claims here, because the money comes from taxation it has already been stolen so that doesn't count! By that logic I could hang around waiting for someone to be mugged, knock the mugger over the head and legitimately walk off with the proceeds.

I think the problem is that the people making these claims are not really familiar with Science Fiction as a literary form. They seem to think it began when they discovered it. Looking back though to the early days you will find nothing new in Serenity, not as science fiction, not as a film nor in its ideas. It isn't a bad film, just not especially original on any count.

The big bad government - the 'Alliance' - is a supposed coming together of the US and China. Joss Whedon, in the extras to the Serenity DVD sees this as positive, but you wouldn't know that from the discussion in Blogistan. It isn't an original concept by any means but ironically probably the best known version of it comes from Jerry Pournelle, an arch neocon, although in his case we have the 'Co-Dominion', an uneasy alliance between the US and the USSR. Nor would you know that the driver for humanity leaving earth was overcrowding and pollution - neither of them I suppose particularly high priorities for your average right libertarian.

The film itself is equally derivative - it contains elements of Star Wars, Alien and many others as well as drawing heavily on Whedon's own work. The character of River Tam is clearly another version of Buffy, while the Reavers recall both the myriad demons and monsters from Buffy, (especially in the climactic battle between River and the Reavers) as well as innumerable zombie films.

So is it indeed libertarian?

The short answer I suppose is no. The longer answer is 'only if you think libertarians have a monopoly on liberty' (which to be fair is what many do indeed think!) In practice it is a pirate movie - if Serenity is libertarian then so is 'Pirates of the Caribbean'.

 

Brooks Jensen on Inkjet printing

For thirty-five years now, I’ve been a strong advocate of the virtues of gelatin silver photographic prints. Until 2005, all of my prints have always been fiberbase gelatin silver, archivally processed and toned in a traditional wet-darkroom. Even as the publisher of the LensWork Special Editions and LensWork Folios I’ve used language like "No inkjet compromises!" and "Nothing can replace the depth, tonality or presence of fiberbase silver photographic paper." We used such language to clarify that the LensWork Special Editions were not the “inferior inkjet prints” we feared people might assume they were. Our mistake was thinking that the inkjet technology of late 1990s was not going to evolve. Boy were we wrong!

Jensen goes on to argue that 'inkjet' is the wrong term in any case - the inkjet is the process not the medium - and settles instead on 'pigment on paper'.

I am now offering inkjet images – the correct terminology is actually "pigment-on-paper." I refuse to call these giclée – a term I’ve always thought was meant to disguise rather than to elucidate. Gelatin silver and platinum/palladium prints are so designated because they indicate precisely the nature of the imaging chemistry and/or substrate. Neither of these are defined as their mechanical means of production – "projection prints" or "contact prints" although these would both be technically accurate terms that are occasionally used as supplemental descriptions. Similarly, "inkjet" is an accurate term describing the mechanics of delivery used, but pigment-on-paper describes the material – chemistry and substrate – and is a better equivalent for comparison to "gelatin silver" or "platinum/palladium" prints.

He also has some interesting things to say about pricing and editions that chime well for me .

While I don't limit my prints, I do know that a clear and precise provenance is important to some people and may have historical importance long after I am gone. All of my prints now specify the date of their production, the source (negative or digital file), the precise number of copies I made that day, and which is the number of this print. Here is an example of that text.

A typical First Edition, First Printing will be three to five copies, sometimes as few as two, on rare occasions as many as thirty. Time marches, we change, our creative vision does, too. It is not uncommon for me to see new ways to interpret an old image. I am not opposed to improving an image when I see a need to. Each time I fuss with the digital file, usually to change it a bit to more closely match my creative vision, I call this a new "edition." It's a different interpretation of the raw data, so to speak - a new "performance" in Ansel Adams-speak. Sometimes that might be a little tonal adjustment, sometimes a contrast change, sometimes a dodge here or a burn there, sometimes I'll crop something or digitally remove a bothersome spot, occasionally I go all the way back to the negative and re-scan or back to the original in-camera file and start over. In one way or another, the new "edition" is a new artistic rendition of the image.

Contrary to the contemporary zeitgeist, therefore, the later editions are the ones I would generally consider the more valuable because I perceive them to be the more mature interpretation of the image. Having said that, additional editions may also be a result technology improvements.

The designation "Third Edition, Second Printing" would mean that this is the third time I've worked this image from a creative point of view and the second time I've printed a batch of prints from this third rendition. The print # is simply a count of how many prints I've made from that digital file on that day.

I produce and sell my prints on a first-come, first served basis. Orders are filled in Edition/Print Number order. Obviously, editions are not reprinted except where identified as a later printing.

I also reserve the right to withdraw from sale any image at any time.

Street Art

Today the main thoroughfare of Baie-Saint-Paul is closed to vehicular traffic. Thousands of visitors dine on outdoor sushi, sugar pie and onion soup served up in plastic cups. At least a hundred painters operate from homemade paintboxes, massive "tabourets," French easels and "Stanley Mobile Work Centers." Anything goes--oil, watercolour, acrylic. Amateurs rub shoulders with seasoned pros. As it is in life, some know what they're doing, others have lots to learn. Visitors watch the painters and wander in and out of the nearby commercial galleries.

From The Painter's Keys, a fascinating site from the artist Robert Genn. You can get his newsletter here.

Also posted here. I will from now on be blogging on art, photography etc at that location, where these issues will stand alongside my photographs and other art work. There will be occasional cross posts, especially where, like this one, there is an overlap with my other concerns - or simply because I feel like it.

More on fairs and festivals

Some time ago, (2003 in fact!) I posted asking for information about the economic impact of markets fairs and festivals. Some time later, (2006) I made a separate post about so-called Anti-Social Behaviour, that touched in passing on a phenomenon known as Charivari. I was intrigued therefore to discover a research project at City University in London, that focussed on economic outcomes from such events, but in one of the academic papers linked also to some of those other ideas inherent in Charivari.

Throughout the academic literature, carnivals and festivals are associated – by historians and anthropologists alike – with altered social forms, excitement, even danger. Opinion is divided over whether the carnival is a locus for radical transgression, or simply an escape valve for revolutionary energy, which acts to reinforce the status quo (Cohen 1993; Waterman 1998; Webb 2005). Either way, attention is drawn to the tendency for popular festivals and carnivals, in many parts of the world, and in many historical periods, to be characterised by risqué reversals of hierarchy, ludic mimicry, flamboyant and celebratory cultural expression, and a sanctioned overstepping of conventional rules and norms of behaviour. Arguably, carnival is also associated with spontaneity, and with a sense of being carried away by the momentum of the event through improvised action and kinetic excitement. Although many carnival arts involve meticulous attention to form, structure, even ritual, there remains a strong feeling that participation is more than can be conveyed through an account of moves, music and costume. The element of risk, of unpredictability – not, in any sense, of anarchy, but of an altered understanding of authority, whether actual or imagined – is at the heart of the experience of carnival.

There are also links here with the idea of the feast of the  Lord of Misrule

This is misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance; since going out-of-doors is burdensome, and staying within doors is not undisturbed. For the common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house. The gates of public officials they besiege with especial persistence, actually shouting and clapping their hands until he that is beleaguered within, exhausted, throws out to them whatever money he has and even what is not his own. And these mendicants going from door to door follow one after another, and, until late in the evening, there is no relief from this nuisance. For crowd succeeds crowd, and shout, shout, and loss, loss.

This fear of the reversal of power, of disturbance of the common good runs deep. After all, we can't have public officials made fun of can we?

Words and pictures

I have linked already to 'No Caption Needed'. Here are two more in the same vein - both well worth adding to your feeds.

(Notes on) Politics Theory and Photography

See this essay for example looking at the escapades of the infamous Blackwater in Iraq.

I am not partial to mercenaries like Prince and have made that plain here before (see this post and the links it contains). Today Prince complained that just because his employees are trigger happy yahoos we should not "rush to judgement" because they are working in a dangerous, stressful environment. A couple of things spring to mind. First, no one is making any of these guys take jobs in Baghdad. Second, they are a lot less stressed with no accountability for their actions than they will be if the Congress gets some backbone and starts to inquire into their activities. And third, they are making a ton of money shooting up the town.

Errol Morris at the NY Times

A blog by the maker of the movie The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara that won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004.

See this post about two photographs by Roger Fenton taken during the Crimean War and the baggage that goes with judgements about which came first.

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the two photographs and thinking about the two sentences. [Susan] Sontag, of course, does not claim that Fenton altered either photograph after taking them – only that he altered or “staged” the second photograph by altering the landscape that was photographed. This much seems clear. But how did Sontag know that Fenton altered the landscape or, for that matter, “oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs on the road itself?”

Surely, any evidence of this would be independent of the photographs. We don’t see Fenton (or anyone else for that matter) in either of the photographs bending down as if to pick up or put down a cannonball. How does Sontag know what Fenton was doing or why he was doing it? (To up the ante, Sontag’s sentence also suggests a certain laziness on Fenton’s part, as if he himself couldn’t be bothered with picking up or putting down a cannonball himself, but instead supervised or oversaw their placement. The imperious Fenton: Hey, you, over there. Pick up that cannonball and move it on to the road. No not there. A little more to the left. Or maybe it wasn’t laziness. Maybe he had a bad back. The incapacitated Fenton: Boy, my back is killing me. Would you mind picking up a few cannonballs and carrying them on to the road?)

While I was wrestling with these questions, it occurred to me that there was an even deeper question. How did Sontag know the sequence of the photographs? How did she know which photograph came first, OFF or ON? Presumably, there had to be some additional information that allowed the photographs to be ordered: before and after. If this is the basis for her claim that the second photograph was staged – that the landscape was posed for the second photograph – shouldn’t she offer some evidence? Fenton takes one photograph (OFF), oversees the scattering of the cannonballs and then takes another photograph (ON).

Look around you

There is a view of art that places it at the top of human endeavours, represented I suppose by people like Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt. However the existence of such elevated work does not invalidate art produced by us lesser mortals.

Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said, in response to a question about why America had such high levels of violence, “because you have such awful wallpaper”. This seemingly flippant response masks an essential truth, enumerated recently on TV by Stephen Fry, that we seem to be the only species able to make the place uglier by our efforts. Not everything we do of course – I think the sublime qualities of the English countryside must surely count as one of the greatest artistic achievements of all time.

Nevertheless, the environment we create for ourselves is often impoverished and at worst downright ugly - even unhealthy. We know as a race we can do better.  The challenge is to create the conditions in which that can happen. Artists surely have a part to play and while a 21st Century Michaelangelo would be nice we can't rely on that so it will depend on all of us to raise our sights - at least occasionally - from the cashbook to the world around us.