An abject failure

One of our members tells us:

If you need many words to describe what your picture means, it doesn't speak enough for itself.

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So I present here one of my abject failures:


Best regards,

Doug

Beautifully explained, Doug. Not the object (subject of your photo) but your objection to the inane comment made by a member other than myself.

In a way, it is ironic you say so much in your photo. It's context speaks clearly. But we will argue that there are some who 'don't get it' as there may be with photographs serving other purposes. Some people expect too much of their audience and some audience members expect too much of the photographs.

My English teacher, a wise and thoughtful man, would forgive me for not understanding Chaucer or Pope or Shakespeare.
"Tommy, you will understand one day. At the moment you look at the words. In the future you will look deeper and find your own words. Speak in your own words as Chaucer did. Make it clear. And if those who listen still don't get it, then and only then can you call them fools."

I think he was calling me a fool but I was never sure.

The photo is the same. We need to be educated before we fully understand. It's not wise to assume everyone is as smart as we are. There are some that will never get it. But that should not exclude them from the enjoyment of the joke. An enlightened moment is a joy for all of us.

So, Doug, please enlighten me. It looks much like a piece of the inside of a toilet flusher. I have replaced a few in my time.

xxx

Even if we don't know what the object is, the picture is self explanatory: it is obviously a documentary picture of an object.

(and I think that the object is the inside of an insuline injection pen)

Hi, Jerome,

Jerome Marot said:

Even if we don't know what the object is, the picture is self explanatory: it is obviously a documentary picture of an object.

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Quite. A picture is a picture.

(and I think that the object is the inside of an insuline injection pen)

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You are quite right, in particular a Novo Nordisk FlexTouch pen.

The significance of the parts shown in this photo is given in my technical article, "Insulin Pens and Their Mechanisms", indexed here:

http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/index.htm#InsulinPens

and accessible directly here:

http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/Insulin_Pens.pdf

The specific description of the parts portrayed in the picture starts on page 33. The overall description of this pen's mechanism starts on page 24.

Best regards,

Doug

Doug Kerr said:

Quite. A picture is a picture.

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Well... yes. But beyond that truism, it is very clear that this particular picture simply seeks to document a particular object, as opposed to, say, a picture of a sunset seeking to elicit an emotional response.

Doug Kerr said:

One of our members tells us:



So I present here one of my abject failures:

Douglas A. Kerr: Self explanatory?​

Best regards,

Doug

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Doug,

I wasn't sure what it was as I do not have context. It's not self explanatory and it's not obviously a technical illustration. There seems to be an O ring missing from the right end, but I could be mistaken.

This, of printed large wouldn't be out of place in an art gallery as, "Untitled". Then it would bring to minf Duchamp's repurposing of first one plain urinal and then buying 10 or so more and making them his art too by merely adding his signature.

So this could be, "Untitled" and in the catalog, described as

Medium: teflon and polypropylene
Doug Kerr, December 2015
12 x 55mm
1/1
Unsigned


So it doesn't "speak for itself".

Art rarely does, except when we show beauty such as a sunset, a nursing mother or a happy child chasing butterlfies.

Asher

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

I wasn't sure what it was as I do not have context.

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Yes. Part of my point.

It's not self explanatory and it's not obviously a technical illustration.

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Indeed. But it was asserted that if it could not be appreciated without extensive explanatory text, it does not "speak enough for itself".

There seems to be an O ring missing from the right end, but I could be mistaken.

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No, and I apologize for the picture not being clear enough in that region. What we see is not a continuous flange but rather an interrupted one. Between its segments are little groups of splines, which engage an internal spline in the dose setting knob. The flange limits the longitudinal travel of the tube into the knob (to our right).

There are little slots between the segments and spline groups, whose exact purpose I do not understand. I suspect it is to make the flange segments radially compliant, probably to allow the parts to be "snapped together" during assumbly. I need to contemplate that further.

In any case, I think I need to do some more processing of that image to better reveal that detail.

Best regards,

Doug

Yes a document void of any conscience that could be part of a police report.

James Lemon said:

Yes a document void of any conscience that could be part of a police report.

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I have a bit of trouble understanding the concept of a document with conscience.

Doug Kerr said:

I have a bit of trouble understanding the concept of a document with conscience.

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Look up the work of Walker Evans. By giving documentary photography a conscience is what made Walker Evans one of the greatest artists.

Doug Kerr said:

So I present here one of my abject failures:

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Did you maybe fail to understand what I meant or is this just a failure of not addressing the question to me beforehand and instead exposing it to public discussion (a failure in politeness)? You know I would have asked you such a question per message first.

Documentary/technical photography, this is not what I am referring to and you know it.

Message vs. context was discussed for your example.

Best regards,
Michael

Michael,

I hadn't realized that this thread referred to your comments as a lot of folk suggest and insist that a picture should "speak for itself". I do appreciate when that is so, but can't see how it can apply to art that has built in inheritance and idiomatic references and context for which education might be helpful. No doubt that you might qualify the idea that art should "speak for itself", when these dependancies are particularly obscure!

Before Doug saw some commonality with my own idiosyncrasies, we often clashed where he made fun of my frequent typos or where the typing program corrected something to be absurd. A lot of such issues are corrected by PM, as you point out. I myself prefer to deal with these mismatches privately. Working against this is humor, of which Doug has his own unique brand!

Well Doug, I missed this but on this occasion a mea culpa might be in order, from one olde gentleman to another!

Asher

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

Well Doug, I missed this but on this occasion a mea culpa might be in order, from one olde gentleman to another!

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Maybe so. I'm not sure which is the "from" and which is the "to".

Best regards,

Doug

Hi, Michael,

Michael Nagel said:

Did you maybe fail to understand what I meant or is this just a failure of not addressing the question to me beforehand and instead exposing it to public discussion (a failure in politeness)? You know I would have asked you such a question per message first.

Documentary/technical photography, this is not what I am referring to and you know it.

Message vs. context was discussed for your example.

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OK.

Best regards,

Doug

James Lemon said:

Look up the work of Walker Evans. By giving documentary photography a conscience is what made Walker Evans one of the greatest artists.

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I can imagine photography with a consistence. I can't imagine a photograph with a conscience.

Doug Kerr said:

I can imagine photography with a consistence. I can't imagine a photograph with a conscience.

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Well imagine the photograph leaves it's creator and gets to have a life as if it had a breathing spirit of its own. "This work speaks to me!" one might say. So in that sense the art "lives" apart from the artist and beyond his/her lifespan. So in that sense, art as a person could be imagined to have a conscience! That would be expressed, in part, but the accumulated impressions the community gathers on how the art impacted them and what it seemed to project in terms of meaning, challenges, acceptance and consequences.

Asher

Michael,

In your signature, you have a statement that I have noticed but regrettably never completely assimilated! Mea culpa!

?

"If you need many words to describe what a picture means"

This is the obviously important qualifier whose origin and full meaning I missed completely. My own "abject failure" to realize that Doug had been actually quoting directly from your "Signature statement" with the implied conclusion that then, "the picture doesn't speak sufficiently for itself"

Obviously I must pay closer attention - my regrets and apologies!

Besides, you do not say that you require a picture to always speak for itself, so to this degree, we seem to be in complete agreement.

Asher