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Now that I have your attention, let's talk about art. And by the way, how does it feel to know that I can get your attention with just one word? We are all manipulated much easier than we think we are.
Anyhow, back to the topic. I think that photography is much like music, there are two ways to go about it. Technical precision, or improvisation. So much of the music we hear today is electronicly synthesized, remastered, overdubbed & overproduced. In some cases this works, some bands & musicians are known for "grandeur". But what about the good old days when a bunch of guys went into a room with some instruments, turned on the recorder, and played. What they got was what they got. Not perfection, there were tiny flaws, a bad cord, a mumbled lyric, whatever. But this gave a human element to the music. I don't think music should be perfect. Art reflects the human condition & since none of us are perfect, why should our art be? Some would call these glitches "imperfections". I prefer to call them "personalizing".
During this exhibit I have tried to present photos which I think fall on both side of the tracks, precision & improvisation. In last weeks "Jennifer Overkill" for example, I was going for pictures with (as we say in photography) "black blacks with texture, white whites with texture, and everything in between". I spent way too much time on those. Any sane man would go nuts, good thing I'm not sane. The Little Shop of Horror photos you saw in week 2 were purposly compensated to crank up the contrast. "Technically" they were "bad", but they had the cartoonish effect which was exactly what I was looking for. I devoted a great deal of time to making "bad" prints to the exact degree of "bad" that I wanted. Then there was the "Clockworks" series. I am proud to say that I flew thru those in record time. Whatever came out was what I got. I used virtually zero brain activity on those photos. That's what I call "slash & burn photography". You may get art, you may waste paper.
Joe Jackson's philosophy on music is this: "If people want to hear my songs performed live exactly the way they are on the album, why don't they just stay home and listen to the album. When I perform live I want to give them a different take on a familiar tune." I figure if my photos were suppose to be exact duplicates of what was visible at the time, why didn't everyone else just look at the same thing when I looked at it. I'm going for that different take.
The point of all this is that bad art can be good art - if that's what you're going for. With this final series, I walked a line between fine art and slash & burn. These prints are not quite perfect, but close. Sometimes I went for the "white & black & all between" look, sometimes I went for the "cartoon contrast" look. I could have dodged or burned a bit more here & there, but what's the point? Enjoy them for what they are: Windows that allow you to see what I see. Moments that are frozen in time. Cages holding particular arrangements of the light spectrum which will never occur again. And then back off, just look at the people, just enjoy yourself, just have a good time - so what if one of the guitar strings is slightly out of tune - we're jamming.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
-- Captain James Kirk