John Voss - Photographs: March 2023

Monday, March 27, 2023

As often as I've returned to places I've already photographed a great deal, I still find something new! These are three of those happy finds!

Thursday, March 23, 2023

I visited the memorial site of the El Faro again yesterday and was surprised at the number of commemorative objects that continue to accumulate and seem to be constantly renewed. I was particularly struck by the many small stones that were left on each little, iron 'piling', a graveyard custom, until I realized that the sailors were lost at sea and there are no graves to visit. The ship sank in a storm in 2015 and all 33 of the officers and crew were lost. Jacksonville designated this beautiful little park to their memory which was a kind gesture that I'm sure is appreciated.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Continuing with the negatives from 1994, here are two I processed that were taken on the coast of Maine, probably Camden though I'm not sure. If I were there again, there are things I'd do differently, but presenting them still seems like a good idea.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

So, yeah! Here are a few more from the Wayback machine - 1974-75! These were taken at the Cloisters in upper Manhattan which is in Ft, Tryon Park, as is a view of a path there. Here's a link to more information about this place. https://artsandculture.google.com/partner/the-cloisters-museum-and-gardens

I will be posting more photographs from the trove of medium format negatives from 1974-75 that I found yesterday. These two were taken in a pasture near West Chester, Pa. I was out with my father who was toting a new Mamiya RB67; we stopped wherever we saw something worth photographing. I chose to make portraits of cows. I never saw what my dad photographed.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Yesterday, I came across a bunch of black and white negatives I made in 1974. These images were made in Oakland, Maine which was the town closest to the camp on Lake Messalonskee. I was teaching at the New England Music Camp and was deeply interested in photography even then. I will be posting more as I scan and process the ones I like, but here are three to begin.

Thursday, March 16, 2023

A few days ago, my wife and I planted a Japanese maple tree sapling hoping that its partially shaded location would keep it from excessive heat. Where we live in northeast Florida is pretty much the southern limit for these trees, so we're hoping this little guy will make it. And why go to the trouble? Because I miss the vibrant colors of autumn in NY, and this tree's job will be to turn yellow when it's ready! ;) Even though it has been in the ground less than a week, its starting to leaf out.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

I was surprised today when I went for the eleventeenth time to Cedar Point to find a part of it I'd not been to before. And, there was a lot that I thought would be interesting to photograph. Here are some of those.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

Though I've made scores of trips to Big Talbot Island SP, I had not hiked the area I photographed today. There are so many fallen, bleached trees in parts of the beach, that it's not difficult to imagine most or all of those that remain will meet the same fate in a few decades, and with rising seas due to climate change, there will be much less land for new growth. Here are four of the images from today:

"Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection and after-examination, and are in no way part of the creative impetus. When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial clichés." —Edward Weston

"How do you become Real?" asked the rabbit. "It doesn't happen all at once" said the skin horse, "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to those who don't understand." From "The Velveteen Rabbit"

ARTIST STATEMENT

I make the picture; you do the rest. What you bring to viewing an image is unique, and to suggest what I think you should or might bring would be inauthentic. The only manipulations I use are those of traditional wet darkroom practice which can be emulated with reasonable fidelity in Photoshop Elements, Lightroom or similar software.

Just a bit of 'attitude', thank you very much!

"Photography for me is a way of avoiding grown-ups, boredom and going to the laundromat. It allows me to live in another world, intensified and of my own finding. I assume the right to stare long and hard, to be blunt, loving and unselfconscious. I attempt to find a kind of poetry that eludes me in other more sober activities. It has become a continuous search with no shining end in sight except to go on trying." - Lilo Raymond from Women of Vision: photographic statements, 1982, Unicorn Publishing House

"Photographs are one of mankind's most profound expressions of stillness. They allow us the ability to hold time in our hands and facilitate a merging with time that exists in no other form. ... The world owes a great debt to all those who have, from a state of exceptional awareness, preserved stillness for us to hold." from the Introduction to Road to Seeing by Dan Winters.

"Compensating for lack of skill with technology is progress toward mediocrity. As technology advances, craftsmanship recedes. As technology increases our possibilities, we use them less resourcefully. The one thing we've gained is spontaneity, which is useless without perception". David Vestal

"When I make a photograph, my perceptions feed into my mental model. My model adjusts to accommodate my perceptions (leading me to change my photographic decisions). This modelling adjustment alters, in turn, my perceptions. And so on. It is a dynamic, self-modifying process. It is what an engineer would call a feedback loop. It is a complex, ongoing, spontaneous interaction of observation, understanding, imagination, and intention." from The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore

"The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public." Henry Geldzahler

"Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the million and buy records by the billions. We, the people, affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art. The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires." from Wall and Piece by Banksy quoted by Bill Jay in LensWork No. 67.

"Art has gotten a bad name as the realm of unctuous charlatans, greedy dealers and their glamortrash clientele--the hang of smartypants fish-wrapper scribblers and toot-brained mummies who dress like Johnny Cash. As cartoon-like as it seems..., the fashionable art world constitutes a tiny fraction of the comprehensive art world, but it has plenty of money behind it." James L. McElhinney

"A serious photograph not only sets itself apart from all other moments but also captures the particularity of its subject—a face, landscape, tree, store front, tool, cigarette butt, pattern of ice crystals—while at the same time revealing its universality. Again, that is what art does—what art demands and requires. Without particularity a photograph is but a meaningless generality. A photograph of a non-descript parking lot that could be anywhere in urban America, whether that photograph is eight feet by eight feet and hanging at MOMA or four inches by four inches in an automotive magazine, is exactly the same thing—a trite generality. The photograph that captures the particularity of its subject stops us because it lies outside the daily barrage of trite and general images we are bombarded with. It holds us because it is like no other moment. It holds us because it has seized its subject as it has never before been seized. " John Wood, 21st Editions

"Objectivity and subjectivity are always a constant battle. When I work on something, I try to be as subjective as possible. Then, as I go along painting, I want to gain a certain degree of objectivity in order to know if anything's working. I look through mirrors; I turn the painting upside down; I try to go outside the house or studio and try to peer through windows as if I'm somebody else looking at it. I go through all these motions to try and see it from an objective point of view." Jamie Wyeth, 2004, from his website

“I always think that being a good photographer is less about knowing rules than knowing yourself. What I make of a subject comes from inside of me.” Michael Levin

"Look at any photograph and the question naturally arises. What does it describe? The world in front of the camera, or the world inside the photographer's head? This tension -- between objective and subjective -- is fundamental to photography. Szarkowski labeled it Mirrors and Windows. Other divisive terms have attached themselves at various times. It's a problem peculiar to photography. There is no mistaking a song or a screen print, for example, for the objective world. But an 8x10 pepper? That's a tougher call. However it is defined, the perceived division has been a meal-ticket for analysts, not to mention the occasional photographer." From a Blake Andrews review of the book Deutschland by Gerry Johansson for Photo-eye.

"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship, and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." Tom Stoppard

Continuing with the traditional processes of photography in an age in which technology has become ubiquitous there still remains a niche for those of us who embrace the way of the undigitized, unplugged, and hand made.

Usually Close to Home

Most of the photographs here made before September of 2013 were made in the Hudson Valley of New York State. As much as I might want to visit a host of other iconic and exotic locales, I have loved where I've lived, and have found it visually stimulating and satisfying. But, since September of 2013, I have been exploring the region of northern Florida, and southern Georgia where we have moved to stay. The ocean is close by, as are pristine salt marshes, abundant trees that are new to me, many draped in Spanish moss, perpetually changing beaches and dunes, and extraordinary skies. It will be a new body of work. I'm eager to get started.

As to their mostly being monochrome, the venerable photographer, teacher and writer David Vestal offered that he listened to radio because the images were better, and photographed in black and white because the colors were better. I agree completely about the photographs.