"But what Pollock did is he painted, he dripped for 48 months and became this most famous artist.  And then he thought, 'I'm repeating myself.'  And so he willingly went back to the hell of not knowing what he was doing.  Artists, I want you to think about inventing a machine in your work that creates things that you cannot predict that it will spin off.  That's why I like Matthew Barney's work.  That's the only reason.  I just think that he might be as surprised as you are - hating it or liking it - about what's coming out."

A loose quote from this lecture by Jerry Saltz.

"The absence of color cannot and does not diminish the strength of Eggleston as an artist. It is largely up to the viewer to disassociate themselves from their own deep mental ties to him and to his 'color'. I would not though say that the absence of the 'Southern' would not diminish Eggleston as an artist. I think that it would. Eggleston as a 'Southern artist' cannot and should not project his 'South' on to simply anywhere. Yes, to be a 'democratic' photographer might suggest this approach but I would put forth that Eggleston is more accurately a 'Southern democratic' photographer. There is no need for him to show anything or anywhere else."

From an essay on Wiliam Eggleston: 'Before Color' (2010) by Doug Rickard.

Corita Kent's rules for my new year.

"There is a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination. This is an understanding that an earlier generation of students, and photographers, accepted as a first principle. Now ideas are paramount, and the computer and Photoshop are seen as the engines to stage and digitally coax those ideas into a physical form--typically a very large form. This process is synthetic, and the results, for me, are often emotionally synthetic too. Sure, things have to change, but photography-as-illustration, even sublime illustration, seems to me an uninteresting direction for the medium to be tracking now, particularly at such a difficult time in the general American culture."

Tod Papageorge via reallycrumby, Erin Jane Nelson's blog.

"After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him."

Matthew 2:9-11

This fall.  Merry Christmas!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Magnetic_Pole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibla

From this summer.

"The herders used knives to carve, though the paper-thin soft, white bark of the aspen could be carved or scratched easily with just about any sharp object, even a thumbnail. The herders made a thin incision or cut, which could hardly be seen, and that was all the human hand contributed. The rest was up to the tree itself. The outline of the carving begins to show a few years later after the tree scars over. [...] No re-doing and no correcting mistakes are possible, and in the end you know that the tree will wither, revert to the earth, and the carving will self-destruct."

"J.L., a sheepherder, recounted that when he arrived in America the camptender took him to this godforsaken mountain in the wilds of northeastern Nevada and told him, 'This is going to be your home for a while.' After the camptender left he felt so terribly alone that he instinctively walked over [to] an aspen and carved, 'Hotel Derrepente' ('Hotel Suddenly')."

"The herders used aspens as their medium of communication, though it was not a very speedy one – in the best cases it took years for a 'conversation' to be completed."

From "Carving Out History: The Basque Aspens" by Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe. Photo from here.

This summer.

"When we think of wilderness in America today, we think of remote and perhaps designated regions that are commonly alpine, desert, or swamp.  Just a few centuries ago, when virtually all was wild in North America, wilderness was not something exceptionally severe.  Prong-horn and bison trailed through the grasslands, creeks ran full of salmon, there were acres of clams, and grizzlies, cougar, and bighorn sheep were common in the lowlands.  There were human beings, too: North America was all populated.  One might say yes, but thinly – which raises the question of according to who.  The fact is, people were everywhere.  When the Spanish foot-soldier Alvar Nunes (Cabeza de Vaca) and his two companions (one of whom was African) were wrecked on the beach of what is now Galveston, and walked to the Rio Grande valley and then south back into Mexico between 1528 to 1536, there were few times in the whole eight years that they were not staying at a native settlement or camp.  They were always on trails.

"It has been a part of basic human experience to live in a culture of wilderness.  There has been no wilderness without some kind of human presence for several hundred thousand years.  Nature is not a place to visit, it is home: and within that home territory there are more familiar and less familiar places.  Often there are areas that are difficult and remote, but all are known, and even named.  One August I was at a pass in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska at the headwaters of the Koyukuk River, a green 3000 foot tundra pass between the broad ranges, open and gentle, dividing the waters that flow to the Arctic Sea from the Yukon.  It is as remote a place as you could be in North America, no roads, and the trails are those made by migrating caribou.  Yet this pass has been steadily used by the Inupiaq people of the north slope, and Athapaskan people of the Yukon, as a regular north-south trade route for at least seven thousand years.  All of the hills and lakes of Alaska have been named in one or another of the dozen or so languages spoken by the native people, as the researches of Jim Kari and others have shown.  Euro-American mapmakers name these places after transient exploiters, or their own girl friends, or hometowns in the lower 48.  The point is, it's all in the native story, and yet only the tiniest trace of human presence through all that time shows.  The place-based stories people tell, and the naming they've done, is their archeology, architecture, and title to the land."

from "The Etiquette of Freedom" by Gary Snyder.

"'In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

Zechariah 3:10.  Dad likes this one.

“The wilderness is not a landscape you visit; it is all around you, wherever you are. We persuade ourselves that our taming of the world is profound, we lay water mains and sewers and read thousand year old books, we drive autobahns through solid rock, we huddle together in caves lit by incandescence of television screens. We do everything we can to be safe, and still the planet spins, the wind roars, the great ice caps creak and heave, the continental plates shudder and bring cities crashing to the ground, the viruses infect us and the oceans toy with us, lapping against the edges of our precarious land. We are in the midst of wilderness, even curled up with our lovers in bed.”

Paul Shepheard in The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What Is Landscape?

"according to Willa Cather all the foundation/raw material for artists comes from their experiences they form before the age of 14 - a very rough approximation of an idea nestled in a quote she says"

Willa quoting Willa Cather

"'For behold, I create new heavens
   and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
   or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
   in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
   and her people to be a gladness.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
   and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
   and the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
   an infant who lives but a few days,
   or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
   and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
   they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
   they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
   and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain
or bear children for calamity,
for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the Lord,
   and their descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer;
   while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
   the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
   and dust shall be the serpent’s food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
   in all my holy mountain,'
     says the Lord."

 Isaiah 65

"With friends, or people that I see on a daily basis, I begin to notice gestures and movements that convey a way of holding ourselves up to being seen. Being comfortable in one's own skin has always fascinated me. What interests me is when someone is caught in an unselfconscious moment. It's a hard thing to see in everyday life, because it happens so rarely that we get to see someone's guard let down. It probably accounts for why I love seeing people read, or sleep, or do the dishes—the moments in which we immerse ourselves in something and slip out of self-consciousness."

Dave Woody, writing for the National Portrait Gallery.

More:

"The images that I have been making lately are a mix of landscapes and portraits from the Northern Colorado area. I live on the Front Range, along the start of the Rocky Mountains, but I find myself always driving east towards the Plains. There is something comforting in the drive, and the expansive space allows me to deal with a minimalism that complements the portraits. There's not much out there to deal with, pictorially, so the interesting thing is to become attuned to the variations in light and color. The Plains pictures are about the oceanic space and the horizon, the light and the weather.

"The portraits are of kids from the area of Fort Collins, Greeley, Eaton and Ault. Having grown up here, I think about the accumulative effect of living near the plains, of being sensitized to this kind of space and light. I've never experienced the same quality of light, or the same feeling of immensity of earth and sky in any other place I have lived in."

"In 1944 a Cold War began, a war that was brutal, inhumane. A war that has now been almost forgotten. The Western powers continued to consider the occupation of the Baltic and Eastern Countries by the Stalinist powers to be illegal despite the post war conferences that had recognized the borders of the USSR. Hidden behind the Iron Curtain, the occupation of the Soviet block continued for 50 years and destroyed the lives of millions.

"It is estimated that there were at least 20 million deaths. Many believe that the real figure is closer to 60 million.

"Despite not receiving any backing from the West, the partisans’ resistance fought against the Soviet regime. These partisans had to abandon both their families and homes and seek sanctuary in the forests. In numerous villages and towns, domestic dwellings were attained by KGB officers for use as control centres, interrogation, imprisonment and torture. These homely spaces were converted into places of terror. As a result the forest not only became the place of refuge but also the place of mass graves.

"The most active and forceful resistance came from the Lithuanian ‘forest brothers’, which lasted for 10 years."

Statement for Indre Serpytyte's series 1944-1991.

"Pedro Vicente: The first thing I thought when I saw your images was that they were very aesthetic and visually pleasing. I would say, even, that they seemed to me, to some extent, peaceful, especially the paper or the typewriter ones. But when I faced the explanatory text accompanying your photographs it was like my perception was slapping my vision. I didn't see what I looked at. What role does text play in your photographs? Do you feel the text is part of your work?

"Indre Serpytyte: At the time the text was very necessary to me, it just seemed right to have it. Seeing the events written in black and white helped me to come to terms with what had happened. In some ways it was like a full stop at the end of the sentence. At the start of the project, the text intended just for me, but through time, I found it hard to separate the two and now I think that the text has definitely become an inseparable part of this work. I understand that the juxtaposition of these two factors, the very visually pleasing images with such a personal and straight to the point piece of text causes friction, but it is this friction that I find fascinating. I think this friction portrays the exact emotional state I was in when these events occurred. The images portray the emotional coldness and distance towards the situation as they are very calculated and constructed therefore the text confronts the situation and the viewer head on. I hope this is how the work touches the viewers too."

Interview about the series A State of Silence, about her father's death, in 1000 Words Photography via this blog.

"Perhaps the deepest form of being svoi is being rodnoi.  People who are rodnye to each other have one of two connections: they are tied to the same family line, or by the land on which they live.  These two notions are so symbolically close that the resonance from one nearly merges with the other.  Rodina, the land of the rod, is kin and rodina is earth.  When it is of the earth, a rodina can nearly smell with local soils; when it is Mother Russia, it is a vast expanse that one loves.  Land has an intimate relationship to the concept of being svoi.  Being rodnoi is a special form of being svoi, with an emphasis on the fact that that soil and kin are shared." (pg. 84)

Margaret Paxson in Solovyovo: The Story of Memory In A Russian Village, published 2005 by Woodrow Wilson Center Press

Growing Apple Trees.

Edit 1/8/11: Maybe our fridge is too cold?  The seeds I put in a paper cup with moist paper towels at room temperature sprouted real quick.

"Once he had the impulse to make landscape images, Friedlander implies, the desert seemed the 'natural' place to turn. Yet, in the brief personal essay that concludes his book, Friedlander states that the Sonora is, for him, among America's least welcoming landscapes. It is 'a pincushion with pins on the outside,' a place so bright it makes his eyes sore as if they were stuck full of cactus needles. The photographs he made there over a 10-year period convey this inhospitality to viewers. Glaringly bright and seemingly uncomposed, they aspire to get us lost too, among the phallic saguaro and deciduous trees.

"While Friedlander sets out to explain how in mid-life he came to photograph these landscapes, he spends more time in this essay recalling the lush Pacific Northwest of his childhood than explaining what took him to the Southwest - 'the place most foreign to me, the opposite of my home Olympics, opposite in every way.' He might as well say Olympus, or just plain Eden, when describing his native Washington state. Although he has not lived there for years - years during which his camera focused on what he considers the inherently dislocating subject of cities - it is clearly the landscape by which he still sets his compass.

"Finding a second home, a landscape for adulthood, in this country where relocation is almost a given, is in many ways the subject of The Desert Seen. The book begins with an epigraph from Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography of My Mother (1996), a sentence of Proustian length and musicality, printed large to fill a page. It is the only introduction the unruly photographs receive, and it was obviously chosen with care. With typical aplomb, Friedlander turns to a writer whose recurrent subject is gardens to introduce these pictures of a garden turned inside out, all chaos and thorns. Kincaid writes of the imaginative bonds that tie people to places, the places they are from and the places they may later choose to be from:

"A human being, a person, many people, a people, will say that their surroundings, their physical surroundings, form their consciousness, their very being; they will get up every morning and look at green hills, white cliffs, silver mountains, fields of golden grain, rivers of blue-glinting water, and in the beauty of this - and it is beautiful, they cannot help but find it beautiful - they invisibly, magically, conquer the distance that is between them and the beauty they are beholding, and they feel themselves become one with it, they draw strength from it, they are inspired by it to sing songs, to write verse; they invent themselves and reinvent themselves . . .

"Precariously, the passage works itself up to the conviction it has been trying to adopt: 'you and the place you are from are not a chance encounter; it is something beyond destiny, it is something so meant to be that it is beyond words.'

"These are curious words to introduce a volume of pictures of a place where the artist emphatically does not feel at home, but to which he is drawn nonetheless. The brilliance of Kincaid's sentence lies not just in the compelling beauty of the sentiment it hits like a crescendo, but also in the seed of doubt it holds - the awareness that, no matter how vital it is for people to feel connected to a landscape, this is a connection they build in the imagination, with songs, poems and pictures, a connection they build unconsciously, inevitably. How else could people feel tied to all manner of landscapes? The sense of place, of home, she gently suggests, may be the ultimate 'pathetic fallacy' necessary for people to 'conquer the distance that is between them and the beauty they are beholding,' to prove the land responds to our need to belong to it."

From "Back West: Reviewing American Landscape Photography" by Stephen Longmire, 1997 in Afterimage via American Suburb X.

My roommate's photo of the dwelling place of Khurtuyakh-tas – a stone (a menhir!) that looks like a pregnant woman, said to heal infertility.  In the Russian republic of Khakassia, where her family lives.

"I seriously believe that highly intellectual investigations and aesthetic accomplishments are not mutually exclusive. For art to be truly great, they rarely can be far apart. But to think an artist would be so wrapped up in their conceptual pursuits that they'd miss seeing those happy accidents that can come through experimentation quite frankly makes me sad for them. What are you doing in your studio if not, at times at least, opening yourself up to the possibility of some sublime incident sneaking its way into your process?

"In other words, PLAY. For the love of all that's wondrous about art, let yourself play in your studio (from time to time anyway). You can come back round to the hard work when the time's right. If all you do is play, it will show in the work as well, so don't get addicted to it. But if the images looks great...do us all a favor and yes, please, print them! If a sculpture captures your meaning better than a video can, please make the sculpture. No one says it has to be the centerpiece of your next exhibition, but it should exist if it's great, if it's right. There is nowhere near too much of that, ever."

From Edward Winkleman's blog.

"The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the earth’s surface, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create. We believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing.

"The organization was founded in 1994, and since that time it has produced dozens of exhibits on land use themes and regions, for public institutions all over the United States, as well as overseas. The Center publishes books, conducts public tours, and offers information and research resources through its library, archive, and web site.

"The CLUI exists to stimulate discussion, thought, and general interest in the contemporary landscape. Neither an environmental group nor an industry affiliated organization, the work of the Center integrates the many approaches to land use - the many perspectives of the landscape - into a single vision that illustrates the common ground in “land use” debates. At the very least, the Center attempts to emphasize the multiplicity of points of view regarding the utilization of terrestrial and geographic resources."

via I Heart Photograph.