(no subject)

I think Kate's web site gum images are really interesting in that she gets
close to the human form, sectionalizes it giving the images a mysterious
human landscape. And actually the print prices are pretty good because of
the exchange rate between the Kiwi and the dollar (1 USD to approx. 1.5
NZD). One thing though, It's not clear how to determine which image goes
with each price other than using the title.

Good luck with you future work and I hope to see your work here in the
States.
  
Gerry G

Reply about the Chris Jorden images.

On the other hand, I read the article and saw the photographs. Do we really
need some else to tell us about our rampant consumerism. Super large
photographs are trendy, especially in NYC thanks to Gursky's stuff and high
walls in luxury apartments and modern designed second homes. Not that there
anything wrong with that, but it's really been done to death already. One of
the first "creative" things many of us do when initially picking up a camera
is to shot textural junk. We just couldn't print them that big way back
when. But I won't begrudge him the exhibition and the press (and he is
shooting 8x10). That stuff is hard to get at any time and I wish him luck
and sales - it's just that I don't think the images are that socially
relevant anymore.

Oh yeah, I've had a black dial phone near my darkroom for over 20 years too.
I just never replaced it-and friends like to use it once in awhile for fun.
One digital answering machine/Fax/phone in the house is enough.

Judy Seigel wrote:
>
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Matthew Miller wrote:
>
> > I find it rather amusing that on an alt. photo list that is populated
> > (mostly) with people who mix their own chemicals and coat their own
paper,
> > that this is such a big topic. So kodak won't make paper. Big deal.
One of
> > the reasons I started alt. processes was to lessen my dependency on big
> > business. <insert objectionable political statement here> :)
>
> I was thinking the same thing... which is in fact the meaning (or the main
> meaning) behind the term "Post-Factory Photography" -- in the sense of
> *after* the factory, as post-modernism means *after* modernism, not the
> photography of factories that make posts.
>
> Although an article in Sunday's [July 24] New York Times Arts & Leisure
> section about Chris Jordan's photographs of industrial detritus does bring
> other possibilities to mind. He photographs what the Times calls "Great
> Big Beautiful Piles of Junk." But they are, besides the abstract graphic
> power of the images, full of meaning as well... in that they "criticize
> the excesses of consumerism by capturing it in minute detail." (I'd
> contrast them to John Pfahl's photographs of dumps, which are not only IMO
> much weaker as images, but seem, at least to me, rather dilettantish, in
> that they lack strong meaning beyond the fact of "I'm so artistic I make
> art from a dump".)
>
> I thought Jordan's most stunning image (at least as reproduced in the
> paper) is what looks like a vast field, maybe an acre, of discarded cell
> phones, which he achieved by elaborate analog AND digital strategies,
> starting with an 8x10 format camera (which the article describes as if he
> were Merlin) and then noodling two negatives together digitally.
>
> We also read that "if all the cellphones thrown out annually were
> recycled, they would yield 202,000 ounces of gold (worth about $84.8
> million) and keep 65,000 tons of toxic materials -- battery components and
> elements like cadmium -- from landfills and incinerators."
>
> It's hard to say, or make that I wouldn't *venture* to say, whether this
> would be better managed under some other form of government than
> capitalism (what do you think, Susan?), though I certainly have the
> impression that socialist (or semi-socialist) governments, as in
> Scandinavia, manage their environment better. That may of course be simply
> because their countries are smaller and more homogeneous, hence more
> easily managed.
>
> My hunch, though, is that it's more the form of election than of the
> economy -- and I blame it all on television. Once it became necessary to
> buy television time to get elected, and since that is so expensive, and
> the corporations can make those large contributions as most private
> parties cannot, most of our legislators both red and blue are [euphemism]
> kept persons of corporations, as witness the fact that they have NOT
> increased fuel mileage requirements for autos, not even a teensy weensy
> bit this year, while they are, ye gods, tinkering with daylight saving
> hours on the theory (read "hope" or even "pretense") that they will thus
> save fossil fuel, lots of luck.)
>
> (That TV stations, or channels, or whatever you call them, get their
> license from "our" government, thus selling public air for private profit,
> is not this discussion, although it does tend to be overlooked, as is a
> basic human characteristic, called by old process Freudians "denial.")
>
> However, I don't mean to digress. My first point is that these
> photographs in the vile pinko lying NY Times ***liberal*** newspaper of
> record, look stunning. My second point is that, for all my many documented
> sins, and those yet to be discovered, let alone documented, I have never
> owned a cell phone, in fact still use the rotary phone nailed to my wall
> in 1957, making me feel, at last, very virtuous, in this respect at least.
> (Although if people didn't buy stuff, our economy would collapse, but I
> don't know what "ism" would cure that, short of back to the farm-ism.)
>
> My 3rd point is that I could well envision the photographs of scenes the
> article describes, but doesn't show, of junked cars, even junked SUVs I
> daresay -- presumably along the lines of the photographer's "Recycling
> Yard No 1, Seattle, 2003," a scene of junked posts (although junked
> *wooden* posts would be biodegradable, hence not a problem.)
>
> As for the vanishing Kodak paper, let's look on the bright side-- as
> someone pointed out, you can do emulsions, you can buy paper, it wouldn't
> be the end of the world. In fact the metaphor that comes to mind is the
> training wheels on the bicycle. They're a crutch, no? Maybe when you give
> them up and just ride around up & down on two wheels, the biking gets
> better? Or maybe by then digital printers will fully replace that pain in
> the buttsky silver gelatin paper? True, they're not there yet, but they
> have come a long way.
>
> Oh, and a note to Kate -- your comment about not having seen the "real
> thing" when you began gum printing made me think, what the hell is the
> "real thing" in gum? IME, gum styles tend to be so different that it's
> possible to possibly divine the printer from the print. You might do that
> with SG from the content, like, say, a Solgado or a Wegman, but not so
> easily I daresay from the print.
>
> OK, that probably is the bright side...
>
> cheers,
>
> Judy
Received on Mon Jul 25 09:00:54 2005