Join me at my new address

This next year I'm going to be exploring ideas on how to make new work, how to change - generally I'm interested in how to you find something new within yourself. So, please join me at Start with the first, which was part of a larger response from a friend to my question of "what am I going to do...." and her response was "just start with the first image."

Art and Technique

I've been attending the Digital Darkroom lecture series at the Annenberg Space for Photography for over a month and am still troubled by the issues of technique as it relates to photography. There was an interesting post thread at Flak Photo related to this concerns also.

So what is the importance of technique - if I use Gaussian blur am I disqualified from being a "real" photographer - or is it artist? Is this dialog similar to something that sculpture had almost a century ago with Duchamp?

As a photographer I'm part gear head, it's one of the ways that I connect with what I want to say - like a musician choosing an instrument that they're going to speak with. Plus, not everything I do is serious - I like having a format for quick sketches (hipstamatic), one for really covering a location (digital) and one from the heart (large format). All of those speak to different parts of how I want to express myself.

My newest love is wet-plate. It's got the magic of large format with a luminous voice. The above image is from an afternoon spent at a friend's house.

My search for inspiration...

Over the holiday break I decided to make a commitment to attend the Iris Night Lecture series at the Annenberg Space for Photography...in Century City. They're every Thursday night and the tickets (which are free) go on "sale" every Wednesday at noon. It has been a very mixed bag so far.

On the plus side there's the location...it's behind the Creative Artist's Agency building, which is kinda cool. There must be some government offices there as well, because a few weeks ago there was a ton of very clean-shaven guys in black suits and sunglasses (no lie) speaking into their sleeves. A visit by Joe Biden prompted that one. Other pluses are: it's free, the people running the place are very friendly, you get to meet a bunch of photographers - and where else can you park in Century City for a buck?

So, what's my problem? Maybe the subject (the Digital Darkroom) of the current series is bringing out an emphasis on technique - but many of the lectures have left me wondering if anyone thinks about content anymore. One photographer was very inspiring for the first 5 minutes, then it started to repeat itself in a strange loop on how everyone's an artist and that "art" is just the expression of a burst of creativity. I'm sorry, but that's not really true. Perhaps everyone's an artist, but not everything we do is art. Art (with the capital A) is not just about creativity - I should know - I'm creative as hell, but most of the time I fully understand I'm not making Art. At the end of the pep-talk, he then just talked about his technique...

So, I'm not finding true inspiration yet, but maybe next week?