Photography as an Art Form

Last week I talked at Highfield Hall about Photography as an Art Form.  I may be able to write more but there are a number of simple propositions that are the core of what I want to say.

1.  Photorealism is as much an aesthetic in photography as it is in painting.

2. Although photography is a useful tool if one's objective is documentation, there is no reason that a photograph has to be a document.

3.  If you are in an art gallery, you should be expecting a work of creative imagination, not a document.

4.  The f64 group made a big mistake for photography by defining themselves by technique rather than by aesthetic objective.  Since then photography has been trapped by expectations of fstops and megapixels.

5.  An acquired image is a plastic form, not a fixed form.

6.  My relation with the forest is more important than the fine detail of its trees, leaves, and twigs.

7.  Art is a shared fantasy.

8.  The usage "artists and photographers" needs to be retired; so does the classification in bookstores, "art" in one section "photography" in another.

Parallel Universes: Photography Show at Falmouth Art Center has many dimensions

(this review submitted to Falmouth Enterprise and Cape Cod Times June 8, 2009)

It is a privilege to review the Photography Show at the Falmouth Arts Center.  There is a lot going on here with this first juried show in the wonderful new home of the Falmouth Artists Guild and there is much to see in this extraordinary new building, culmination of so many efforts over the last few years.

In the show there is a set of prize-winning photographs exhibiting some great photographic technique.  A full list of this work is below.  Congratulations to the winners.

What I found as I looked at all the show's images, assembled by juror Marion Roth, was that there was a set of pictures that drew me in, that got me excited and made me think....or dream.....or feel.  I want to write a few words about these, because this is what art is all about, a sharing of feelings and fantasies and notions through a medium.  That medium might be oil on board, dots of ink on paper, or marble on a pedestal.  Not much by themselves but improbably alive and transmissive after a human hand, and heart and mind have worked on them.

First is Jean Adelman's "Sunday Squall", a view from the shore of a looming storm.  Everything in this small work makes us feel the impending threat -- a darkly silhouetted house, brilliant eelgrass in the foreground set against the steel gray depths of the looming cloud, and under it, tiny and threatened, the wake of a boat making for the safety of the shore with all haste.  Beachgoers sit calmly in their chairs seemingly oblivious to the threat, although one curious pair seems to be aware of its approach.

Deborah Casso's "Lone Lily Pad" stopped me in my tracks.  After you get done asking yourself..."now how did she do that?", you continue to marvel at the two realms of fluidity, the ghostly tuber ascending in a sinuous curve from the depths and the forthright platform floating on liquid you know is there but cannot see....definite, crisp and precarious.  Is this risk? Or reassurance?  For me, this is the riveting work of the show.

Howard Dunn in "Avila, Spain" gives us a classic set of three Spanish ladies chatting in a village that seems far, far away.  Douglas Greetham and David Kelly give us bright spring flowers in "A Celebration" and "Breezy Day".  You can feel that Spring is bursting outside the building.

Barbara Groom's "Power" plays with shapes and gives us a bright and clear visual pun constructed of a cross and crosspieces.  Darlene Heard's "Crystal Sea" reminds us that there are other places besides the Cape to escape on a boat in beautiful water.  Andrew Howard's "New Silver Beach, Winter" is both chilling and breathtaking. 

Joel Leavitt makes a moody fogbound scene on Nantucket and Lillian Holmes shows "Maurie" a simple but poignant family portrait.

 Ruth Leech makes us feel the emptiness of a deserted house and Alicia Petitti's moody mysterious moonrise over a cotton candy sea in "Lucy Vincent Beacon" intrigues and makes one feel safe on land.

Finally Milt Williamson's "Help with the Flag" is a classic flag picture which excels in the depth of its colors, the play of light and the fluidity of its composition.  You feel that the group of children that is folding up the flag is one with it.

I have one suggestion for my fellow photographers, which is to say more about the materials, the medium, we are using.  The labels for the show make for a monotonous repetition of "photograph" as the medium.  Only one label says anything more.  I urge everyone to take the trouble to list more specifics, such as "C-print", "Silver gelatin print", "Archival inkjet print",  "ink on paper", "ink on canvas".  A show of paintings would have more specifics on the label such as "oil on canvas", "acrylic" and so forth.  I think this is particularly called for these days, as there has been an explosion in the last ten years of materials with which photographers can present their work.  "Oil on Canvas" made a revolution in Leonardo's time, and digital print techniques are making a revolution in ours.  Let's say more about what's going on.

Prize-Winners:  Juror's Choice: Kathleen Hall, "Reflections of Motif #1"; Best Color: Doreen Sykes, "Tree at Ruins"; Best Black and White: Mark Chester, "Chauffers"; Best Creative Study: Jeannine Lavoie, "Reflections"; Best Special Technique: Robert Manz, "I Cipressini"; Honorable Mentions: Ben Allsup, "Nutcracker"; James Lynch, "Canal Sinking"; Joan Pearlman: "Double Focus #3".

Robert Manz is a fine art photographer working in natural light.  He is a member of the Falmouth Artists Guild.  His work can be seen at Jan Collins Selman Fine Art in Falmouth, at the Cataumet Arts Center, and at his studio in Pocasset.

New Studio

In January I decided to buy a studio space in the town of Bourne on Cape Cod.  It is off MacArthur Boulevard (Route 28) near the village of Pocasset.

This is a pretty big step, as my studio has been our condo.  But the condo has sort of filled up with frames and mat board and foam core and pictures.  The computer and printers are in our bedroom, and my stepdaughter's bedroom fills up with prints just varnished.

The real reason I bought the space is that when I saw it, it spoke to me.  I just knew this would make a good studio.  It has big picture windows with a north view, a good front space for an office/reception and a huge back space for work tables.  One corner in the back space, near the pair of windows, should make a good corner for doing portraits.   Around both rooms there is plenty of wall space to put up pictures for a gallery.

The location on Route 28 pretty much means that anyone from Bourne to Woods Hole to Martha's Vineyard drives past.  And, for the time being, that is the community I hope to serve.

Buzzards Bay, the Canal, Gray Gables, Mashpee, Back River, Monument Beach, Tobey Island, Monk's Cove, Pocasset, Hen Cove, Patuisset, Cataumet, Squeteague, Megansett, Old Silver, Chapoquoit, Black Beach, Sippewissett, Wood Neck, Quissett, Woods Hole, Naushon, Robinson's Hole, Pasque, Quicks' Hole, Nashawena, Cuttyhunk, Menemsha.  I have been up and down the Buzzards Bay east shore since before I can remember and gone a bit beyond to the Vineyard -- I hope to do more.  

And I hope that my sign on the road will reach out to anyone with some part of their life in these places along the Bay shore, and you will stop in and see what I have to share.

Here are some pictures of the studio space before I move in.

Beach Day at Chapoquoit

"Beach Scene"

My Cape pictures go largely in a one-year cycle.  During the summer I am doing lots of shooting of seascapes and beach scenes and during the winter I am working on the files and making prints.  So the pictures I will be introducing in 2008 were largely taken in 2007.

Last summer I introduced a picture from Chapoquoit beach, slightly abstracted, with people, and with a broad view of, over and past Bowerman's beach club.  It is taken from the angle of the rock bulwarks that support the parking lot overlooking the beach.  I made a large varnished ink on paper print - 20x30 - mounted on canvas and framed and it sold to a man who lived just a few hundred yards away.

"Two Red Chairs"

This had been taken early in 2006, so in the summer of 2007 I set out to take more from this perch, and other points along the beach.  My goal was to work on something between a landscape and a street scene.....people on and along the beach and in the water.  Sunning, playing, talking, running, reading.  The visual elements included form and gesture, the sand, the sky, the sea, the vast distance you can see down Black Beach to Sippewissett, beyond to Woods Hole and out to the Elizabeth Islands.

I was conscious of the danger of prying, intruding, exposing.  I don't feel too concerned as I feel that my vantage is a respectful and celebratory one.  The beach teems with people in their summer rituals, and I only want to celebrate them.

"High Tide"

Here are a few of the images from this work.  I would like to do some kind of community show of these.  I am thinking also of making a calendar or some other print publication of the images.

There are many more and they can be seen at www.robertmanz.net under "latest work" in the "images" section.

"Father and Daughter"

Lifeguard at Chapoquoit

and a while

We are living in Ireland this year and there have been many steps to get here. It is strange to feel culture shock in a country where everyone speaks English; of course it is not just about language. And balancing the sense of things that ought to be familiar but are strange, are threads of memories from an Irish American childhood now connecting to their source.

My approach to pictures is the same, wander in the neighborhood, in our case Counties Galway and Mayo, around Castlebar.

Below, and on the home page of my web site for the time being, is one from northern County Galway that I like, from a volcanic crater lake called Lough Nafooey. A respected critic back in the U.S. thinks the skiff engaged head on in the picture is "too small". Is it? A positive way to put it is "minimalist". I like this description. The skiff is there; you know it. You know it is resting. The skiff to the right is only barely there, but you feel its presence too.



But I think this picture is about the lake, which stretches from the strangely sandy shore in such a gliding way that you feel you could just walk out on the water. To go more for that feeling, I think I will try some more with the skiffs even smaller. It is a magical place and I am making more trips there.

Since I last posted I have settled more comfortably into a mode of slightly abstracting using Photoshop tools. My aim at the moment is to achieve the effect at a level where it is not very noticeable. Is it here?

A set of images from Counties Mayo and Galway is available here.

Been a while

Yes it's been a while. I have been through March on the Cape and back to Budapest for April and May. Went to County Mayo, Ireland in April, and down to Tuscany in May for my annual pilgrimage to Florence. Only this time I decided to see what was the wonderful landscape of Val d'Orcia south of Siena all about. I have seen many beautiful images from here, and beautiful landscapes in "The English Patient" and "Gladiator" (Maximus' home) were set here.

I went, and extended my stay, so that this year's annual trip to Florence was really a trip to the Val d'Orcia. Did get to Florence though, and the highlight there was spending a day standing in the Uffizi arcade with the water color painters and the morocchini selling art prints and knockoff handbags, trying to sell some of my prints. Many compliments, no sales, lots of fun.

The Val d'Orcia was beautiful but gave me a strange feeling of taking pictures of what I have seen pictures of....not a very creative feeling. One day I saw a photo tour bus of photographers working on the famous stand of cypresses at Torrenieri. Their van had pulled off the highway that runs right past the spot, and I hope they did well, but it sort of reinforced the feeling of wondering where was my personal experience of this beautiful landscape.

I think it is emerging as I work through the images. Here are two from the day the sun really came out, the clouds blustered in spectacular fashion and I wandered wonderfully through the lands of San Giovanni d'Asso, as I moved from Montalcino to Pienza, by a very roundabout route.



I call the first one, "To Camprena" because just up the road and to the left is the turn to the monastery of Santa Anna in Camprena, which was the setting of "The English Patient" and some opening scenes of the movie were along this road I am sure.




The second one, "I Cipressini" is a revisit of the abstract look I started working on last winter. I like it, and am applying it to many of the Val d'Orcia pictures.

More images from the Val d'Orcia can be seen here

Culture Shock

Crossing the Atlantic went smoothly and jet lag has not been so bad. Culture shock at a fairly low level too.

It's a strange thing changing spots every two months. There are a lot of old habits to resume. For example I haven"t driven a car for two months, not a big deal, but the timing is off. I am not used to a swirl of vehicles going at 60 miles per hour. Have to think about it. And everyone is speaking English. Strange that that should be strange.

I have resumed work with color spaces. I have a lot to learn. And am worried each step of the way that I might lose my bearings. In Budapest I calibrated the monitor and put up all the images on this blog using recommended practice of embedding sRGB color space. Then I came back to the Cape, calibrated my monitor here, and found that all the newly done images with sRGB space embedded looked hypersaturated and contrasty. On the other hand, images put up in the past with no calibrated monitor and no embedded color space, look just fine. But I am getting used to the recalibrated monitor, am getting some idea of what the files do and where they go, and feel comfortable with all of my past files. They seem to be in the right color world.

Made my first print of the abstract winter bog image -- below.





An 8x12 inch on William Turner paper from Hahnemuehle. It has some texture, which goes well with the abstraction. Am looking forward to varnishing it.

From Budapest to Cape Cod

I will be heading back to Cape Cod tomorrow, after almost two months in Budapest. It has been a quiet midwinter time, doing some scans, thinking about what images to print, experimenting with this blog, and enjoying family.

Have been doing some looking into Val d'Orcia, which seems to be the site of iconic Tuscan landscapes, at least the gently rolling kind, and wondering whether to include it on my Spring trip to Florence. Might be easy to fly to Rome, rent a car there and drive up to Florence. Only problem is, I might never make it to Florence, this countryside is so beautiful.

The "season" will be starting on Cape Cod, and back in my studio, will be working on lots of prints for stores and galleries. I am excited to begin an affiliation with the Jan Collins Selman Fine Art Gallery. Jan is someone whose work and person I have a lot of respect and enthusiasm for, so I hope this will be a good relationship.

May have found a stock agency or two to work with. A different world from fine art prints, but the question is how different, or how much chance for an interesection of the two sets. When I work with an image I am thinking of how it would look on a wall, but what is to say that would not look good in print as well. We will see.



An image from Budapest last Fall.....there are no cafe tables on the streets right now.