From: Jack Fulton (jefulton1@attbi.com)
Date: 09/06/02-09:52:18 AM Z
Now, I believe some of you are getting the gist of what photographs of the
outdoors (wilderness et al) are about. There is no assumption that, as Judy
says below, the things we know as mountains and moonrises, are generally
accepted as beautiful. Most don't think much of them simply because they are
there. People who live there deeply appreciate that natural quality of the
Earth. City folks like metaphor, hence delight in Minor's work. In a way,
they both (AA & MW) made what they saw sublime. They transformed, rendered,
or converted the thing before them to the notion of esteem they held for it.
Both made lovely prints. I feel their personae {an individual's social
facade or front that especially in the analytic psychology of C. G. Jung
reflects the role in life the individual is playing
b : the personality that a person (as an actor or politician) projects in
public} aided them in their interpretation. For instance, virtually all of
us know AA played the piano (the neg is the score and print the performance)
and was straight about letting people understand he believed in the
relationship between the two. Minor was gay and perhaps sought the metaphor
as a way to explain the hidden, and hence sought to present spiritual
revelation. I respect both of their work and lives. The point here is to
realize the worth of AA's subject matter. Ketchum's work is lovely but the
important element Greg brings forth is that what he depicted as the natural
beauty of the Tongass area convinced important people to 'change their mind'
and to realize some portions ought not be ruined by what humans describe as
need . . or want.
What Kathryn and Keith recognized in AA, say, Vs Minor, is that, today, the
world is suffering more from disregard about the environment and that is due
to people not being able to enjoy it the way it is and they therefore need
to transfer reality to some clever metaphor. Planned obsolescence cannot be
applied to the environment.
Jack
>>>Greg Schmitz wrote
> BINGO! And as I recall O'Sullivan had a show of 16x20 and larger
> prints on Capital Hill which had been credited for the influence it
> had on Congress which led to the creation of Yellowstone National
> Park, or was it Yosemite. The exhibition was, I think, the first
> photographic exhibition on Capital Hill. Adams and his work, I think,
> had a similar effect on some in later generations.
>
> I'd been thinking about the landscape thread and serendipitously
> happened on a copy of Robert Glenn Ketchum and Carey D. Ketchum's book
> THE TONGASS: ALASKA'S VANISHING RAIN FOREST. If you think landscape
> is dead - take a look at the Ketchums book and read the text. We've
> really f____d-up this nation big time. There are few, if any places
> in the lower 48 where you can really get away. What passes for
> wilderness, is usually just a rationalization. For example, most of
> the "wilderness" places in Wisconsin, my home state, have been logged
> 3 or 4 times - and thus are a far cry from what they would be if they
> had been left alone. We killed off the people who lived here to make
> a profit - and now we're doing the same all over the world (actually
> have been for quite sometime). In many cases those "boring
> landscapes" are the only record of what once was.
>
> Maybe I'll go into my anti-globalization tirade later, so I'll close
> with a quote from the Ketchums:
>
> "The fur trade remained the main economic interest for a short while,
> but the declining market and diminishing numbers of fur-bearing
> animals eventually signaled and end to the enterprise. In the classic
> pattern familiar to places colonized by those who have no spiritual
> or moral attachment to them, a resource was over-used to depletion and
> the exploiters moved on to something new."
>>>Judy wrote
>>Ansel Adams takes something generally accepted as beautiful -- trees,
mountains, bodies of water, moonrise, et al, and photographs it. Let's say
he optimizes, tweaks, and masterfully renders it so we can admire, even be
thrilled by, the picture and/or the scene it evokes -- maybe even experience
it as "sublime." But he's not telling us one thing we don't already know.
Or not any Adams I've seen.
>>In contrast, Minor White (who was as I recall mentioned in same breath),
starts with nothing, what you might not even notice, and turns it into the
sublime. I suppose he has some humddrum pictures, no one can sustain that
level unbroken, but that's his *vision* -- finding sublime in the mundane,
even invisible. I think in particular of a worn work glove on the street
next to an open manhole, with (as I recall, haven't seen it lately) an arrow
painted on the street, pointing to either hole or glove (maybe he moved the
glove?). Another iconic White is the shadow of curtain on wall under an open
window -- nothing really -- but a revelation.
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