alexol

Perhaps I explained myself badly, Timmers. I'll try again. As is so often the case, I know exactly what I want to say but sometimes it doesn't come out the way I would like....

• I very much liked the first photo of the series

• I get annoyed by the damning with faint praise that some of our members like to offer - "This is better than last weeks' effort"

• I don't always like all your efforts, which frequently, evidently, require much work.

• That I don't like all your stuff is a good thing. It means you are pushing me into new areas, which I want and actively seek. As they say: minds, like parachutes, function best when open". New things force me the think, to make decisions about what I like, don't like, might like, and why. And what do those choices/changes mean to me. For the same reason, I listen to comedians, politicians and a number of other people whose ideas I may disagree with, and who may offend me. For the same reasons, I have maybe 10 news apps on my phone, accessed daily, ranging from not-completely-crazy-left to not-completely-crazy-right.

• The reference to a fruit bowl was simply that too many of us do the same-old, same-old. Cezanne's fruit bowl wasn't something I had thought about. You are more erudite than I. I am on this site to learn.

• Please keep putting out work that not everyone likes all the time. The jewels are worth it.

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

erudite? Me, oh I'm quite the idiot in this strange world I can assure you. I have been diagnosed with Veins Insufficiency, this caused me to become more educated about medical people in Western Medicine. Nothing like reality to wake one up.

As to the Cezanne reference, I did an MFA with a decent university, so I received half my 3 years of studies in the history of art with a heavy dose of criticism. Not just the 'criticism' found on the Hog but formal criticism. Telling someone you like or dislike something would have one in a corner with a dunce cap on. But it is how people feel 'criticism' is done. Fine in the realm of politics and love but not useful in modern art.

My work has meaning and purpose, what I hope to gain from posting here is the reactions and of course to add to the Forum alternatives to the main stay notion of the female nude that is most easily found in the presentation of Kenneth Clark's book The Nude.

From my early days of 'criticism' I remember a huge row over a graduate students work in which a much older fellow showing crudely executed color photographs of odd looking common women holding all manner of fire arms, not well lite and frankly rather garish in poses and even the presentation. My 'personal' reaction to the work was that it was a train wreck, and yet there was an incredible honesty to the work. The more I sat there viewing this guys work the more I began to 'see' what he was seeing. His work was just not fit for most of what the mix of instructors, MFA and Undergraduates regarded as 'real art'. In a moment I found myself using this formal criticism to rip holes in most of the objections that were being thrown at the work, and the attacks on him were quickly dismissed by pointing out that we needed to stay on task to the art and not the artist, but that in fact if that card was to be played then in fact the guy modeled his persona of speech and ideas, even his looks that all fit the work exactly.

His work presented a reaction to what one might find in a back woods, poorly educated hillbilly point of view if one here to make portraits of these same women holding weapons who happened to be without any clothing, just shoes/boots and hats. The work was no different than the stereotypical persons presented by Diane Arbus of people in New York. Later I was asked if I would like his work on the walls of my home to which I replied "Not on the wall, nor the work of Diane Arbus, too depressing for me, but I would buy a book with his images in it to help me understand why I did not care for his work just like I personally don't lie the effect Diane Arbus work has on my mental state of mind.

So if the work can help us see and understand ourselves and the world then it has provided us with a useful revelation. That is why I will post. But I do love to be a little naughty, to be the bad boy just because the world is rather too pedestrian.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

So the question that comes to my mind after 99 days of images is: do want actual criticism (even though it may come from members without MFAs), the occasional non-critical praise (as is doled out in the photo section) or would you prefer no comment at all? I ask, not to be argumentative, but because unlike some of the sections that invite criticism, this section does not seem well defined in that respect, nor do I know your wishes.

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

Please feel free to make any comments you wish, all is useful. When posters present a personal observation that include their experiences can give great insight as to their like experiences. On a site like this I do not expect any formal criticism. It has happened but it is not expected or needed.

This MFA thing was to let others know that I have been exposed to the history of the arts. In an odd way I came to that degree by way of an undergraduate degree that was based in the sciences, Sam Houston State University in Texas where practical photography is taught, but it was weak compared to most practical photography programs. What moved my work forward was the early involvement with The Friends of Photography and then seven plus years with the University of Texas MD Anderson Hospital attached to the Pathology Department.

That all seems odd I know but then I did have background in other pursuits that formed and shaped my early development. Probably the single largest event was following my family to Germany and them staying there for the full three years. My return to the US in 1971 was for me a huge cultural shock.

The world is different for me as I was protected by 'normal/insulated' but still exposed to the strangeness that is the world of reality. From 1950 to now is just so odd. I feel some what like the protagonist in the film Forest Gump, or Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five. I find literature like The Painted Bird, Gravity's Rainbow and Gunter Grass The Tin Drum so illuminating, so right in the slot of understanding of the madness of the 20th century. I just don't get the basic notions of the US, the 50's nor the loss of the 60's and America turning inward of much sense. I am like the other protagonist A Stranger in A Strange Land.

That is the source of my art, I'm truing to grasp what happened, what went south as WW II ended. I try to see it in Adams Moon Rise Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonrise,_Hernandez,_New_Mexico

Moonrise,_Hernandez,_New_Mexico. Nov. 1 1941.

gsnelson Loc: Western Maryland

This is fabulous!

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

I totally agree, Moon Rise is one of the truly great 20th century art works. Moon Rise and The Face of Half dome are such critical art works just not acknowledged by most arts because they are photographs.

twr25 Loc: New Jersey

I guess dark lighting is your trademark. If that's what your aiming for then good job … I prefer a bit more exposure on the model.

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

Dark lighting is a good way to say it. Moody, emotive, brooding, sensual, deep shadows. There is this thing about the subject emerging from their surroundings that I truly enjoy. It is what draws me to the great imagery in certain Film Noir structured imagery.