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>While using one's imagination seems one of those outlawed things us post-modern era artists should not do, it is essential to the B&W art photograph.< Outlawed by whom? On 2 February 2010 07:14, Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On Mon, 2010-02-01 at 08:27 -0700, Douglas Barbour wrote: > > that abstraction makes sense to me, Chris. I have two very > > large b/w photos by a Canadian, Jane Hinton, from a series called > > 'Structures > > (I changed the thread title since we have strayed.) > > There does seem little written on the formal aesthetics and poetics of > B&W art photography. Given the minor status in art history this could be > expected. > > So it seems worthwhile starting a list of what B&W does. Other ideas, of > course, most welcome. > > 1. First, nostalgia is not a component of B&W art photography, but > rather nostalgia is part of the flood of cliché media images in which we > live. There are some B&W prints designed to hung on a wall in your house > in the local furniture store of old and rusted no longer used farming > implements with rustic wooden frames; nostalgic boring clichés. > > 2. B&W needs to break through or escape from this saturation of cliché > images. Absolute deviation is one way, like a lever that can open enough > space for art photography to begin. > > 3. The space created is essentially a haptic space which is dynamic and > always changing. So we cannot say B&W photography is a static and fixed > form. Haptic alone cannot escape cliché since television and advertising > images are grounded in haptic sensations. You crave to have that Rolex > haptic image on your wrist, to handle it, to feel it. You crave to feel > that brand of laundry washing powder on your skin. > > 4. This is a second aspect of absolute deviation in that it is without > relation. Clichés function as a saturation of relations. Every relation > becomes saturated by cliché images and to get some relief, you buy the > product, in hope of some fresh air. Absolute deviation escapes cliché by > way of being absolute. No purchase required. > > 5. Haptic sensation and space can be achieved through a variety > strategies. It is at the point that the differences between B&W and > colour emerge. For both, an oblique angle which refuses a horizon and > vanishing points can create a haptic feel. > > At this point we come across a list of haptic strategies and a new list. > > 1. As already said, oblique point of views as above. > > 2. An illusion of clutter, such as the clutter in my still lifes. In the > history of still life painting clutter is one strategy; the mess left > after the feast. While this works with B&W, simply working with colour > instead of B&W film seems to fail. > > 3. This failing of colour to form a haptic sensation in the way B&W can > occurs by way of rhythm. For colour there needs to be a rhythm of > colours and if this fails then the colours need a different arrangement. > B&W works in a different way and as such forms a rhythm which belongs to > the B&W media. > > 4. Black and white, rather then reducing colour to relations of grey as > if grey represents a colour, instead leaves or preserves colour as > absolute. So B&W does not work with colour as relations of grey, if it > did another cliché arises from which escape is foreclosed. You will > never escape. > > 5. Colour then must work with its own relations and not borrow from > relations of black and white media. In western art this is the colourist > slabs of colour, eg, Cezanne. > > 6. B&W works by way of abstraction where abstraction is imagination and > can only ever be imagination. While using one's imagination seems one of > those outlawed things us post-modern era artists should not do, it is > essential to the B&W art photograph. An imagination of the viewer as > much as of the artist. It is through imagination that both viewer and > artist comes to the image and through this is also the pleasure one > feels in an image. > > ... and now I run out of ideas.... more later perhaps, Chris Jones. > -- David Bircumshaw "A window./Big enough to hold screams/ You say are poems" - DMeltzer Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/