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Documental Photographs might, indeed, be Fine works of Art!

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
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Tom Robbins: Intersection of gravel roads in LaSalle County, Illinois.


This picture, might be utterly documental and still be art. I'm not saying it is fine art, but that label is not excluded by the nature of the work. There are many factors to allow a picture to go beyond the mundane, interesting, nice or special to have greater impact and be valued as Fine Art. If this was the first time we had seen such a picture, I'd wager it would be in an art museum. This needs no emotions to be art. It does need a concept and we might have to prepared for it. If you had other such works in a substantial series, all documenting the scene, none manipulated in any way, the collection could transcend the ordinary to that we could, as a society, make a special place for and even want to own.

For your own work, do what your inner forces drive you to do and let the pieces work. Optimize them as your spirit and intelligence directs you and then share them. That's all you can do. Either we're entertained and wish to engage with your work or not. As a documentary photograph, I'd call this art.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The Meanings We Might Bring To This Photograph

So do you think Tom was in rapture about the mood of the place? Is this full of feelings or perhaps is this a representation of a site which is clean and archetypical of what we might find on a country road? Isn't it more likely that Tom saw this empty area with that sign and said, "Let me take a picture so I can see this again and others can see it too". So at the time, the picture was perhaps little more than a snap. However, as it gained importance to him and he selected it from many others that he let pass, this picture becomes more, much more important top him and us. Likely the arc of intent has stutters!

To me this is a photograph of an isolated piece of roadway with a simple form, no messiness of other traffic and therefore an empty canvass, so to speak. The only particular detail is the finding of bullet holes on the traffic warning sign. So now this is a documentation of bullets having been fired at the traffic sign. There's no evidence of a crime to a person, just minor vandalism already built into the local budgets to take care of.

So right now there's nothing emotive rushing through the picture, it's all intellectual. That's my point. This is an art work because it provides us with fairly clean space, an original world in which to explore a part of the master metaphor of life, "Life as a Journey"

So this is what Tom has done, he's given us a simple image populated by no characters but those we might choose. How clever. Tom has in fact managed to create a micro-universe where there are few choices,

Stop, go forward and go left or right, go off into the fields, go back or some combination of all these. Still we have imaginary boundaries and opportunities to exercise our free will according to our intelligence or fancy. We might ask about the significance of the bullets as to safety or it's reference to which choice, left or right, one might choose.

In all this, it's only as a result of the viewers interest, engagement, reading the picture, intellect and musing that could possibly give rise to any eruptive emotion like joy, fear, anger or sadness or disgust. Likely this image only might only reward the viewer through an intellectually based esthetic experience and not by an immediate triggering of feelings.

So this picture is an example of a documentary landscape that has no remarkable personal emotive fingerprints and is to me a work of art.

Asher
 

Alain Briot

pro member
The first think I expected in your comments was something about the bullet holes in the sign.

The shooter was very consistent in regards to height but moved slightly from right to left as he emptied his clip. Not a bad spread overall, especially if he was shooting from a moving vehicle.
 

Mike Shimwell

New member
A path on life's journey with a stop sign - you can choose a direction, maybe, or perhaps this is just the end of the road?

I have to admit that I like 'empty' images as they leave space for the imagination to breathe. Further, you have escaped from the ubiquitous 'golden hour' and the, apparently, mid day light suits the subject and feel you have evoked well.

Mike
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
This is a classic, and perhaps too classic, subject and composition immortalized by many photographers. For examples:

- Stephen Shore

- Robert Adams

I suspect I could cite 20 more. It seems like most photographers finds such scenes nearly irresistible.

Nevertheless, Tom's incarnation has a very classic charm and a message. The gunshot holes in the sign juxtaposed with the farm on the other side of the road, plus the endless sky full of clouds, tell of a midwestern landscape filled with boredom. It's actually very good.

I'd like to see the sign -slightly- more saturated and less contrast in the clouds, which seem just a bit too blue and brooding to me. (This being an image of symbolism, lumpy dark clouds are typically used as symbols foreshadowing doom in art.)
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
"Constructing the photograph is iterative" Experience, expectation and execution.

This is a classic, and perhaps too classic, subject and composition immortalized by many photographers. For examples:

- Stephen Shore

- Robert Adams

I suspect I could cite 20 more. It seems like most photographers finds such scenes nearly irresistible.

Precisely!

Well, Ken,

I do like your comments. Tom was kind enough to comment on my reuse of his photograph here and let me in on the story behind the picture.

The emptiness and the sign made him stop the car. At first he wanted a picture of the sign, a repurposed from a school crossing, with the top painted out to work for the T-junction. Then he saw the clouds rolling in and waited. So this is an example of constructing a scene using one's imagination to know what it would be like at a later time

Nevertheless, Tom's incarnation has a very classic charm and a message. The gunshot holes in the sign juxtaposed with the farm on the other side of the road, plus the endless sky full of clouds, tell of a midwestern landscape filled with boredom. It's actually very good.
I was eagerly waiting for your opinion and feel good that your vote for the picture is in support of its worth.

I'd like to see the sign -slightly- more saturated and less contrast in the clouds, which seem just a bit too blue and brooding to me. (This being an image of symbolism, lumpy dark clouds are typically used as symbols foreshadowing doom in art.)

I missed that as I was locked in to it's absence of emotive force and reliance on intellect for power.

Notice that the construction of the picture repurposed his "original intent" to snap the sign. Now that sign anchors the picture and differentiates it from all other such scenes of empty country roads. When the billowing clouds arrive hours later, he made that capture of all the elements.

So we have an instigating event/object that gets the photographer's attention and an intent to photograph it but then this is displaced by the drive from the imagination to make the initial most important object, subservient to to the entire scene. The process, of the intercourse between the imagination and the world we experience results in rearrangements such as this. Now, when the clouds rolled in, that so individual a traffic sign is now relegated to the more humble role of the anchor of the picture; a single object that for the moment stops eye movement and gives one pause. But when we notice the sign further, out of it comes layers of meaning about choices in our own life's journey.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The "Imaginorium: The gymnasia certain works of art provide for our imagination.

So why do I make such a fuss about this empty picture? It has no beauty that makes the heart flutter or the hands tremble. Why stop and give so much attention to one snap? Forgive me for spending so much of your time here, but I'll wager, we'll all learn something worthwhile by lingering here to reflect on what this humble photograph might represent as a form of art to us.

I ask your indulgence at this point. I'll go further. This is not picture for documenting a crime or getting insurance paid up! None of that! This documentation serves the intelligence of the photographer and is then physically engraved in the pictures he will print. That's what art is:

The work done, to externalize in a physical form a concept. This so we can receive patterns, shapes or rhythms in stimuli for immediate evoking of passion or else agreeable musing at another time and place of our choosing. In effect, the display of each form of art is an instance of a performance. In this, the intent of the artist dominates the feelings and thoughts induced.

Some works are so different. The other form requires the viewer to actually enter the world created by the artist bringing along what the person imagines are important, fascinating or interesting. Once so engaged, the participant can exercise thoughts and feelings. We can go much further. Sometimes we might even test our imperatives, "givens" and ways of imagining what things might have been, might really be or what they could become. In effect we re-calibrate significance and relevance, that's how powerful art might be.


Excuse my impetuousness in daring to define art, but that's now my ad hoc working definition. It will no doubt change tomorrow.

Here, art serves not an emotive fountain or a dossier of facts. Uniquely, this photograph of a lonely, boring, void country road presents something entirely different. It's a space for us, a place I call "The Imaginorium", a "gymnasium of the mind. This is a form of art where we must bring our own people, fancies, fears and imperatives. The artists intent is for us to entertain ourselves! We are, in fact, the dancers in the empty arena in the gymnasia of our minds!

This work is important for this gift to us, the creation of time between the seconds of a clock, where we find freedom to imagine with far less constraints than in our real world around us, with so much trivial, seductive and threatening information cascading towards us.

In that provision, this simple scene, so ordinary perhaps by first glance, transcends it's class and is, indeed art. Is it "Fine Art"? Well if it is considered worthy of buying for someone's collection in private or a museum, then yes, I guess it is!

Asher
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
We should "make a fuss" because Tom's image represents a photograph created at an aesthetic skill level higher than what you'll normally find on amateur photo sites. Most of what you see on forums and Flickr-type sites is extremely 1-dimensional. Sure there are many "pretty" pictures, narcotic landscapes, cute babies, "awesome" vacations. But you'll not get much nutrition from that dross.

Here Tom has captured an image, whether or not deliberately, that's rich with imagination and multi-demnsional interpretation possibilities. Most camera owners would snap the sign (the "hee hee" effect) or just the road or clouds on the horizon. But Tom brings three natural elements together to create more than a picture, but rather and impression.

It's always fuss-worthy to take special note of something done well. Perhaps it lights a path for one onlooker to get much richer enjoyment from doing and viewing photography (and art in general).
 
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