PCNW Revisited

(I’m really on a roll on blog posts — that’s the influence of a couple of snow days last week that gave me the unexpectedly uncommitted time to edit several latent posts.)
A while back, well 2013 to be truthful, I wrote a post grumbling about the MFA show at the local flagship university and how much more to my taste was the "thesis" project show at Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW). I found the work there to be a good deal closer to the mainstream and nowhere close to attempting (and failing) to be innovative and original.

How times change.

In the interim between then and now the advisors at PCNW have seemingly changed their approach. The thesis projects that are the capstone of their certifcate program run to the conceptual and introspective -- characteristics that in my opinion are not well addressed by photography.

Moreover the number of students finishing a certificate is dwindling. Only four were in the most recent (July 2016) show. I suspect that the decline in numbers is strongly related to the fact that a prominent local aerospace company changed its policy on employee education benefits to exclude anything not directly related to job skills. But I digress.

I went to the opening of the show and it was a cheerful party with a goodly crowd -- much bigger than I expected.

Two of the four projects in the most recent show were conceptual -- one of these involved large panels of cyanotype material exposed by laying them in the shallows at the edge of a Salish Sea beach. The lapping of the saltwater and the sunlight partly filtered through the water yielded an abstract pattern. The panels were hung without flattening so that the wrinkles in the paper were intended to suggest the lapping of the waves.

The third project was very, very personal and was undoubtedly meaningful to the artist.

The final project was a series of carefully staged and beautifully executed portraits of Jewish women. It was intended to comment on the place of women in the artist's own conservative Jewish community. They were sweet, loving, respectful (too big for my taste) color portraits printed on Japanese rice paper then coated with beeswax that gave them a slightly muted, dreamy look and a vague halo around the highlights. The content -- commentary on women's roles in the community -- wasn't obvious to me as an outsider but the prints were very appealing.

Talking to several of the other guests, the unusual size of the crowd was driven by members of the artist's community who had come to congratulate her and to see how her project turned out. They were delighted with it, as was I, and several of her pieces already proudly wore red dots. Nothing from the other projects had been sold by the time I left.

On the subject of sales -- and pricing -- the pieces in this show were priced in the several hundreds to a couple of thousand dollars. Well, that explains the dearth of sales except to the subjects or families thereof of the portraits. I later discussed the issue of pricing with an experienced arts administrator who explained it all to me. It seems that art speculators (oops, collectors) haunt graduation shows hoping to snap up an early work by a graduate that they believe will turn into a hot market item. Ah. Perhaps pricing to that potential buyer is a good idea if the show is of MFA graduates from Yale but I'm pretty sure that it more often merely gives the freshly-minted graduates an inflated expectation of the market value of their work.

Ray Bidegain, an established Portland photographer, prices his lovely platinum prints to sell -- in the range of $250 matted -- with the goal of making them available to a wide audience. As a result, he sells a lot of them. He openly says that when he can't keep up with printing them then, and only then, will he raise his prices.

LensWork’s Brooks Jensen sings the same song — saying that if you want your work to sell then it needs to be priced at a point that appeals to an audience beyond the wealthy collector.

My friend Katrina for many years did stunning underwater photography. Her large, color prints of tiny sea creatures were expensive. The same images in smaller sizes, on greeting cards, refrigerator magnets, bookmarks ratcheted the price down to a few tens of bucks, a few bucks — or less for a bookmark. Do you want to guess where most of her income came from?

Lomography, Plastic Cameras, and Simplicity

While looking for something else I found this post that I wrote and then forgot to post. (sigh)

When a computer program behaves in an unexpected (and usually undesirable) fashion, the nearly universal tongue-in-cheek comment by the developer is “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”  But even we software developers (a notori ously opportunistic group) don’t have the balls to jack up the price and tout such features and the things the program doesn’t have in our advertising.

On the other hand, that’s exactly what the Lomo website does as reasons for buying their camera.  A hundred and fifty bucks for a 35mm, zone-focus, auto exposure, plastic camera with a lens that vignettes?  Is this for real?  Of course for your $150 plus $15 shipping you also get 2 free rolls of Lomofilm (36 exposures each) and free lifetime membership in the Lomographique Society – nearly as valuable as membership in the International Freelance Photographers Organiza tion for which you also get a membership card, a handsomely engraved certificate and a lifetime subscription to their magazine.  However, IFPO membership is only $39.95, leaving you just over $140 that would buy about a half dozen of Porter Camera’s plastic 35mm zone-focus cameras and a cheap light meter. 

The Lomo promotion, IMHO, is perhaps the biggest PR hype I’ve ever seen – blatantly created to capitalize on the popularity of plastic camera photography and sell lots and lots of their cameras at an amazing profit margin.

Having gotten that off my chest and lowered my blood pressure a bit, I may as well stick my foot in my mouth even further.

While I’m at it – I don’t understand the plastic camera phenomenon, either.  Not that I dislike plastic camera work on principle.  Apart from various swap prints (many of which I like very much, thank you very much) I actually bought three plastic camera prints – not because they were plastic camera prints but because I like the prints.

I certainly understand the notion of using tools that make photography less intellectual, less considered, more spontaneous – to loosen you up and help break out of ruts.  However, I don’t understand why it is more liberating to do so with a plastic camera than, say, an Olympus Stylus or even a hyperfocused Nikon.

I understand the notion of using a plastic camera because it is fun and reveling in the unpredictability of the results.  Now unpredictability makes me crazy so it isn’t fun for me but that’s my problem.

I also understand (and highly respect) the notion of a skilled artist consciously using ‘primitive’ tools and working in a ‘primitive’ style to achieve a desired effect.  The three plastic camera prints that I bought are certainly in this category.  The artist would have had a hell of a time making them work with his Hasselblad.

What I don’t understand is the notion of plastic camera art being art because it came out of a plastic camera.  Much of the plastic camera work I see in exhibits looks like the artist worked his or her butt off in the darkroom to get a halfway acceptable print out of an impossible negative.

Is this liberating?  Is this spontaneous?  Is this fun?  Strikes me like watching a dog walking on its hind legs.  The amazing part is not that it does it well but that it does it at all.

Neither do I understand the notion (epitomized by the Lomo website headline “DON’T THINK!”) that plastic camera work is somehow superior to, more art than, more pure than other varieties of photography.  This strikes me as another square-wheeled bandwagon in the continuing parade of photographic fads.

I have been pondering the “don’t think” issue.  ‘Think’ is a very slippery word.  At the risk of getting academic about this, Webster’s New Collegiate has (in part):

• to form or have in the mind

• to have as an opinion

• to reflect on (ponder)

• to devise by thinking

• to determine by reflecting

• to center one’s thoughts on

• to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference

• to have the mind engaged in reflection

• to consider the suitability

• to have a view or opinion

Most of these definitions emphasize the analytical side of thinking and if you change “Don’t think.” to “Don’t overanalyze.” I couldn’t agree more.  Making art is a matter of synthesis not analysis and it is clear to me that paralysis by analysis leads to puzzling photographs and critical writing that are useless both to the artist and viewer, PSA salons (the bastions of going by the form book) all looking alike, and (may the saints protect us) deconstructionist theory. 

You can also change “Don’t think.” to “Don’t think about the process.” and I’ll still agree.   I can not-think about the photographic process either by using equip ment that is brick simple – an auto everything or a fixed everything – or by becoming so familiar with my equipment that knowledge of how to use it is in my fingers rather than in my mind.  If you can hold the camera above your head and still nail the framing  you aren’t using a camera you picked up yesterday.

Beyond these restatements I have increasing trouble agreeing with “Don’t think.”  I read the two definitions “to center one’s thoughts on” and “to exercise the powers of judgment, conception, or inference” as edging us toward “We photo graph with all our senses”.  The ability to synthesize data from all our senses is one of the truly mysterious happenings in our heads.  However, the reality is that we photograph by pointing the camera and releasing the shutter.  It seems incon ceivable to me that we can do this better, in the long run, by not looking than we do by looking.  Moreover, we cannot photograph a smell or a sound or a feeling or a taste – we can only photograph to suggest the other senses. 

I suggest that statement is more accurately “We decide what to photograph with all our senses.”  If that is the case then the blindfolded photography exercise is an attempt to sharpen our attention to what our senses other than sight are telling us.  Taking better pictures when blindfolded isn’t equivalent to not thinking.  It is a wake up call about being so dominated by vision that other sensory input isn’t getting though -- and that sure as hell is a problem but I doubt that photographing blindfolded will cure it.

... And the Least Fun I Ever Had Doing a Wedding

Every photographer who does weddings — even now and then (like me) has a disaster story to tell. Mine was a wedding — the bride was a friend — that I photographed several years ago. It was held at Salish lodge at Snoqualmie falls. Picture call was for 4:00 (5:00 wedding) which is later than I like but I had sworn promise that everybody would be punctual. We were going to do the group pictures on the balcony overlooking the falls if the weather cooperated and under artificial light in the lodge if not.

Come 3:00 or so I ran my last minute equipment check. One strobe doesn't work -- damn! I got my keys, with Swiss army knife on ring, out to take the battery cover off to make sure I hadn't put the batteries in wrong. Nope. Oh well, no problem, that's why I have multiple strobes. Got the spare, checked it, everything fine. Toss the remaining odds and ends into the car. Barbara decided to leave her purse at home since she is going to be helping with the shoot.

Check the house; set the alarm, lock the doors and out I go. Hop in the car -- no keys. They are still on the counter in my work area where I took the strobe apart. Damn! Barbara, sans purse, doesn't have keys either. No problem, there is a key hidden in the carport for just such occasions. No there isn't -- we had given it to the woman who comes and walks our dog when we are away for the day and it was still on the stair rail where she returned it.

OK - review the bidding. Nearest kid with a key is in Ballard -- that's not going to help. House is pretty bulletproof and the alarm is set. Here comes the fun part. I took a croquet mallet and bashed one of the downstairs bedroom windows then reached in, unlocked it and opened it. (By the way, you have to bash a double-pane glass window pretty hard to break it.) There is now broken glass all over the damn place in the guest room, the alarm is screaming its head off, the dog is having cardiac arrest and howling.

OK -- reset the alarm, call the alarm monitor and tell them not to send the cops, pacify the dog, close the bedroom door to keep the dog out. GET MY KEYS. Find a scrap of drywall and the duct tape to close up the hole in the side of the house. Set the alarm again and we're on the way, only about 15 minutes behind schedule. Got to Salish lodge about 3:45. .......

Nobody from the wedding is there. Did I get the wrong place? Is there more than one Salish Lodge? About then the minister, also a friend, turned up and I sighed heavily. At least I'm in the right place.

Comes about 4:15 (remember the 4:00 picture call and 5:00 wedding) and the bride's sister (I believe) turns up "Where is everybody?" By now it is clear that we aren't going to do the photos outside since the sun is about to dive behind the ridge. OK -- Plan B, set up my hot lights in the lobby outside the ballroom where the wedding is going to be – nice looking space, nice stairway (stairways are good for group photos). The lodge wedding coordinator is very nervous with my light cords trailing all over the place so I position Barbara and two of the (by then present) younger family hangers-on to stand around and say "Be careful of the cord!" when anybody comes within about 6 feet.

Comes about 4:35 and the wedding party dribbles in. Seems that the women had all made a (planned) stop at the hair dressers for a touch-up. Alas, the hair dressers shop had been struck by a car (no kidding) and there was broken glass all over there, too. Bride is not in her dress yet.

Groom and company turned up, the van in which they were all riding had gone astray in some way that I don't recall. Remember the 5:00 wedding? I packed up my hot lights much to the relief of the wedding coordinator. Bride's sister wanders by and says "Uuummm, we don't have time before the ceremony, right?" Right.

OK -- Plan C, photographs postponed until after the cermony (the photographers' nightmare) using strobes. I did the photographs during the wedding as planned and fitted various strobes preparing to do the posed photographs in the lobby. Problem is, nobody had told me that they were going to set up the bar in the lobby for everybody to hoist one or two and eat appetizers while they set up for dinner in the ballroom.

OK -- Plan D, wait until dinner is called and everybody troops in to dinner and the lobby is empty. This did, indeed, work except that by then everybody was hungry and getting grumpy and impatient (and had had a snort or two from the bar).

To my surprize the take was not bad -- much better than I thought it was going to be. 

I haven't done a wedding since.

The most fun I ever had photographing a wedding.

While looking through a box full of long-forgotten prints I happened upon this sequence. I don't have the negatives from this wedding. I cheerfully gave them to the bride's father, also a photographer, for him to print instead of my printing them. I wish I had the negatives for these four.

Photographing a wedding is not really my most favorite task but I sometimes do so. I usually regret it. While I'm in the "wedding photograph" mood I'll also write up the last (in both meanings: the most recent and the final) wedding that I did. But I digress.

This was a garden wedding in the backyard of a friend's rather upscale home in Buffalo, New York. Said friend was the father of the bride, a pretty young woman who had recently completed a PhD at a university in England and was marrying her British sweetheart -- as I recall he was a second freshly minted PhD. His family from England had turned up en masse for the wedding and a cheerful lot they were, too. Her family, all New Yorkers, hadn't seen her for some years while she was in graduate school so the occasion was not only a wedding but a welcome home and graduation party. Both bride and groom had assured me that there would be no drama or histrionics -- everybody got along well and I should expect nothing but good cheer.

In deference to Buffalo's steam-bath climate in July the bride's parents had rented a huge tent for the ceremony and attendees and a smaller one for the reception's food and drink tables. The weather forecast was for sunshine and afternoon temperatures in the 90s and humidity to match. The rehearsal was to be held late afternoon on Friday with the entire cast of characters going to dinner immediately thereafter, The wedding was to be midafternoon on Saturday with the picture call an hour and a half before the ceremony was due to begin . My practice is to turn up for the rehearsal -- not only because there are usually some good photographs to be taken but also to give me a chance to size up the venue and cast of characters. The bride assigned one of her bridesmaids -- the young British woman in these photographs -- to help me sort out the who's-who of the wedding party. The fact that she had never met the bride's family until a couple of days before didn't deter her from cheerfully (but not always accurately) identifying various cousins and nephews.

About a half hour before the rehearsal was to begin a very menacing black cloud appeared from the general direction of Lake Erie and we were treated to a rousing thunderstorm, slashing wind, and drenching rain. We were staying more or less dry under the tent but the thunder made sorting out the ceremony a bit challenging. The minister declared a recess and the bride's father opened a few bottles of wine. One of the groom's aunties -- looking every inch the middle-class British housewife -- cheerfully noted that the tent was ominously sagging in several places from the weight of water that had collected in valleys in the canvas. She marshalled two or three other aunties and they raided the cleaning closet in the house for brooms and mops. With a Brit-accented "Shoulder arms!" they all marched about using their weapons to push the canvas up and spill accumulated water over the edges of the tent. Disaster having been averted and the thunderstorm passed the rehearsal went on with no further incident.

The day of the wedding dawned hot and bright and, given the previous day's rain, even more than usually humid. Everybody turned up as scheduled for the picture call (a minor miracle all of its own.) The bridesmaid who had been assigned to help me asked if I minded if she took photographs also. I did not mind so she fetched her little TLR roll film camera (see the sequence of photographs above) and when I had each group posed she photographed also. She was sweet and demur but not at all averse to hustling a stray relative back in line. I liked her a lot. In about a half hour we ha all the pictures taken and my anxiety level dropped to normal. Photographing the ceremony and reception is a piece of cake by comparison to doing the posed pictures.

About the time the caterer's truck pulled up, so did another black cloud from the general direction of Lake Erie. The caterer, a man of long experience, allowed that he would not unload the food and drink until whatever the weather planned to do was finished. Good plan. We had another thunderstorm, wind, drenching rain and the mop and broom militia formed up again to get the water off of the tent. By a half hour or so before the ceremony was to begin it all blew over, the caterer got set up and all was well -- the grass under the tent was only wet on the windward side. The lawn between the house and the tent, however, was soggy and very soft as was discovered by the first arriving guest in high heels.

With a quick change of costume from nylons and heels to bare feet for both female guests and participants, the wedding took place with all good will and much laughter — as did the reception.

Ah, if they were only all like that.

Memories of a Seagull (not the bird)

I’m still printing old negatives — and will be for quite a while.  It’s been a lot of fun rummaging through old contact sheets and once in a while finding a “Why didn’t I print this a long time ago?” negative.  Here’s one of them from 1990:

I like a lot about this photograph.  It’s certainly surreal (the great Brassai once said: “There is nothing more surreal than reality itself.”).  It is totally out-of-place and out-of-time:  there are no clues about where or when it was taken.  My more formally-oriented friend, Doug, tells me that the composition is excellent.  The shallow depth of field pops the main subject out of the background.  The out-of-focus area is lovely.

I consulted my loosely-kept film log and found that it was taken in May 1990 and that the place was Fort Worden — a retired coast artillery fort in Port Townsend, now a state park and home to the NFP Centrum Foundation.  Ah — for several years I taught a spring-break workshop for high school students there.  The gentleman in the photograph was (likely still is) a professor of music at Evergreen State College.  He and his students had discovered that singing exactly the right tone into this pipe would make it resonate like an organ pipe.

Next question.  Was I really using a 2¼ camera in 1990?  I certainly do now, both a vintage Rolleiflex TLR and a Mamiya 6.  I consulted my loosely-kept journal and it reminded me of a nearly forgotten camera.  Enter the Seagull.  In 1989 I decided to give medium format a try.  Not wanting to spend a lot of money, I bought (as I dimly recall through Maine Photographic Workshop) for $110 a Chinese-made copy of the Rolleiflex, the Seagull.  Checking Amazon a few minutes ago I found that they are still available for a bit shy of $500. which is nearly exactly on the dot adjusted for inflation.  I really liked 2¼ and the Seagull.  A year later a friend offered to sell me a 1955 Rolleiflex in excellent condition and I jumped at it.  I sold the Seagull to a friend who, like me, wanted to try medium format at a modest entry cost.

Why?  Well, the Seagull seemed to work just fine.  The viewfinder was bright — I had to put a third-party screen in the Rollei to make it as bright.  The negatives that I was getting from the Seagull were certainly pretty (see the above evidence).  That said, everything else about it was not so satisfying.  The film wind and focus were very stiff and made a grinding noise.  The aperture and shutter speed adjustments were stiff.  The imitation leather covering on the outside started to peel off.  The lens was annoyingly subject to flair (see right edge of the print above).  When you opened the camera to load film it looked like they started with a block of aluminum, adzed out everything that didn’t belong in the inside of a camera, but didn’t bother to finish the edges.  Perhaps they have improved their manufacturing standards in the intervening 26 years (but since the price has only kept up with inflation, perhaps not).

But still — the negative of the print above is really pretty and it kind of has the look of the 1930’s that I like very much.  Maybe just luck on that roll of film?  Maybe a simpler, less modern lens design?  Maybe my imagination?  I should email the friend to whom I sold the Seagull and see how it worked for him.

Sometimes it is Just Too Easy

I spent most of yesterday slaving over a hot tray of developer (metaphorically speaking since it was at room temperature).  I made two prints.  One was, well, difficult – not quite at the level of “Note to Self” (January 19 blog post).  I am happy with the result and I suspect that the person who bought the print will be, also.

The other print, this one, was a different story.  I went to the Pride Parade in Seattle last Sunday.  As always there was a monster crowd gathering along 4^th Avenue well before the parade was scheduled to begin.  I was early enough to be able to score a place to stand in the shade near Lenora Street.  Immediately to my left were three young women – obviously friends – who were bantering, laughing, and generally having a good time.  After the parade started I couldn’t resist – the conversation with one of them went like this:

Me:  May I take your photograph?

Laughing girl:  Sure!  Do you want me to look at the camera?

Me: No, just go back to watching the parade.

She did.  I did -- I took three frames.  My reflection is in her mirrored sunglasses – they are purple, by the way.  I gave her my card.  I hope she emails me so I can send her a print.

< July 4:  Yay!  She did -- I have  print ready to send to her.>

This is a full-frame, straight print with a #2 filter (well, I did burn the upper right corner a bit), 50mm lens.

Sometimes it is just too easy.

PWCs

A couple of weeks back we went to a very funny musical play (that I shall not name) showing at an excellent theater (that I shall not name).  Its original setting had been changed to take place in a cowboy bar.  The theater was configured with a flat floor and audience on three sides.  We had first row seats (our favorite) so our feet were nearly on the edge of the stage.  When the house opened and the audience trooped in, the costumed actors were already on stage playing guitars, etc., singing, and chatting up the audience – that was invited to come on stage.  In fact there was ad hoc seating on stage and members of the audience were invited to stay on stage – or come and go – during the play and the actors were prepared to shoo them out of the way when needed.  There was also an open bar at one side of the set and the audience was invited to visit the bar at any time during the play.  With one thing and another it was a goofy, unconventional approach to theater that promised to be a lot of fun – and it was.

There was not the “Welcome to …” nor was there the customary “Recording devices and photography are not permitted.” announcement.  

Which brings me to PWCs – people with cellphones.  As cheerful audience members swarmed over the stage there was the inevitable quick draw of smart phones (some with selfie sticks) and even a couple of tablets.  Sitting in my front row seat I thought “Well, they are ok with photographs; at least until the performance begins.”  I had been out photographing earlier in the day so my 35mm film camera was in my shoulder bag.  I got it out and got exactly four frames before an usher, also in costume, rushed over saying “No photographs!  No photographs!”  I lowered my camera and said “What about all the people photographing with their cell phones.  Are you going to stop them, too?”  He looked embarrassed, said “No photographs.” (rather sheepishly) once more and walked back to his post.  

The cell phone barrage continued throughout the show.  (sigh)