Fw: HELLO?


Bob Kiss (bobkiss@caribsurf.com)
Fri, 23 Jul 1999 17:39:58 -0700


-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Kiss <bobkiss@caribsurf.com>
To: ALT PHO PROC. <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca>
Date: Friday, July 23, 1999 3:09 PM
Subject: HELLO?

>DEAT LIST,
> I have been sitting here at my light table working on the foremantioned
>collections of early 20th C glass plate negatives by Parkinson and I found
I
>could restrain myself no longer. Have some of you not been reading the
>comments?
> Why keep your negs! Five feet away from me is proof of their value as
>historical documents and the fact that prints have a nasty habit of going
>out of circulation or at least out of reach of researchers from many fields
>and students, limited edition or not, commercial or fine art in original
>intent or not!
> Did no one read the rather erudite comments (I forget the author) about
>two hats. First you make your photographs for love, for art...because you
>must! Then, you change hats and sell them! I have never made a personal
fine
>art photo with the intent to sell...I made them because I was moved by what
>I saw and how I saw it and HAD TO share that vision..it was an emotional
>imperative. Then after making prints I realized I wanted to share them so I
>put up a show...then to my amazement they sold! I do not feel dirty! I feel
>great that some one saw what I saw...felt what I felt...perhaps not exactly
>but they resonated with the intense feelings that made me make the photo.
>AND THEN THEY DECIDED THAT THEY WANTED TO LIVE WITH IT AND BOUGHT IT. As
>someone else mentioned...it is a great SPIRITUAL feedback...and since I
have
>not as of yet had TOO much experience of giving my spirit a home without a
>body, nor can I buy film, paper, pt/pd chemicals or even aqua regia (just
>kidding!) WITHOUT MONEY I didn't refuse the money. As I stated before,
>Michaelangelo took the money from Pope Julius II for the Cistine...was it
>not inspired? Was he influenced by the financal pressure? BUNK! Monet was
>VERY successful by the time he bought Giverney...did his Lilly Pads suffer?
>Did his work suffer when he was poor? My answer is a quote from Richard
>Bach's REVELATIONS, CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT MESSIAH: "Argue for your
>limitations and, by god, they will be yours!" It is not a new idea or an
>impossible task to create purely and clearly and then turn around and
market
>well that which your have created from a clear soul! If you say it is, you
>are telling us about your limitation...not ours!
> Perhaps my adamacy comes from the fact that I was a fashion
photographer
>from 1974 to 1992 and I know what it is to sell your soul...at least I sold
>it to the highest bidder! Well, I have reclaimed it by quitting commercial
>work and making my living selling my personal fine art work. I knew what it
>is to try to please a market...to cover a BIG NYC studio overhead. I did
>almost NO personal work. It is always said there is no more staunch
>anti-drug advocate than a former addict...there is no more staunch opponent
>of allowing "market pressures" to influence my aesthetic senses than a
>former commercial photographer. However, as I am no virgin in the market
>place, I have no qualms about selling my work to live...a whole lot of
>artists and photographers have, quite successfully, and we have whispered
>their names in awe even on this net.
> I sincerely appologize if my feet of clay slip on the way up the ivory
>tower. Now, I must go back to work on the Parkinson negatives and and get
>ready to shoot some 8X10 negs by evening light of some lovely lillies that
>only bloom for two weeks in July from which I will make LIMITED EDITION
>PLATINUM/PALLADIUM PRINTS. I will make the photos because the lillies are
>the most subtle grades of white and pink and the evening light here in
>Barbados is like the gold light you always see spilling out of Heaven in
the
>renaissance ascension paintings. Should look pretty O.K. in warm PT/PD. I
am
>doing this because I love what I see, because I feel god has done it
>again...made a miracle of vision and I hope to "hold a mirror..." as
>Ol' Bill Shakespeare said. It will be nice if they sell but,
>FRANKLY SCARLETT, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN!"
> CHEERS FROM
>BARBADOS!
> BOB KISS
>



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