Frame 8: Changing Assumptions

I've been wanting to write about the assumptions we inevitably make any time we encounter a new situation or a new person, but I didn't think I had a very compelling story. Just describing how easily some of my own assumptions about this project have been shattered seemed trite or self-serving. I wanted to wrestle with the idea that it sometimes seems to take something different to get us out of our comfort zones, so we can finally see with a new perspective.


I was thinking about behavioral traits -- assumptions, for example -- and how they originally stemmed from our primitive ancestors' needs to survive and succeed.

The ability to make an assessment of her environment in response to an experience probably helped my neanderthal ancestor find the foods that were nutritious and avoid hazards like sinkholes and crevasses. The better she could discern friend from foe and safe plant from toxic, the more chance her genes had to pass on to the next generation.


Genetic evolution is very slow, occurring over millions of years with an occasional accidental spurt. By contrast, the evolution of our society moves quickly -- perhaps at a break-neck pace.

The way we talk, how we organize ourselves in groups, the approaches we make to decisions, what political parties we belong to and so forth, are plastic and can change many times within a single generation. (Because these changes occur so quickly scientists might even wonder what elements of social behavior have primitive importance or influence the behavior of subsequent generations.)

In any case, the fact that we can make assumptions in the face of an event has a strong genetic basis. What I'm interested in is the fact that we can change our assumptions. So often it is in response to an interesting experience. But do we require such an experience to get us out of our comfort zone, or can we imagine a new perspective much like a good chess player works out several moves in advance?

This must be part of the creative process. But how to think from different perspectives? This I leave for you to decide.

It's a good thing that assumptions can be changed. If my assumption was that a person who was blind could not see, I would be wrong. That assumption wouldn't change my own fate, but it would certainly hinder the progress of our society as a whole.

Frame 7: Madam, I'm Adam

When I reached my last day in the darkroom for the quarter, I realized I wouldn't be able to print all of Susan's negatives. This was frustrating and a little depressing. The design of the project revolved around the physicality -- what Susan describes as kinesthesia -- of working with old-fashioned manual photo processes.

One long-term goal for this project is to take the physical prints and augment them with a medium that will allow them to be touched. To be experienced by feeling them. No prints; no augmentation, I thought at first. But then I realized something about problem-solving that leads me to this post.

When I was a youngster in college, my peers and I were encouraged to pursue degrees in the sciences: math, physics, engineering, and medicine. My secret ambition was to be an artist, but I did not give myself permission to study art. Instead, I studied Zoology, which probably put me closer to a study of beauty than I would have imagined.

I learned to appreciate the broken regularity of nature, the harmonious cycles of life, the delicate interplay of animal societies. A frog egg spontaneously grows and divides, cells multiplying in mathematical progression and taking shape ordained by the distribution of yolk (heavier yolk leading to larger cells on the bottom and lighter yolk becoming smaller cells on the top.) The fibonacci whorls of a nautilus shell, the strength of a delicate spider web, and how the location of arteries and veins in a duck's foot conserve body heat are all examples of a beautiful and perfect design inherent in nature.

With science and nature, what is beautiful is what has evolved. Beauty is what we get after millennia of interplay between subject and environment, with sometimes breathtaking coincidences or accidents of nature causing great leaps forward. Life is beautiful because it is.

And what is art?

We think of art as showing us what is beautiful, and perhaps what is transcendental and moving.

I used to think that in order to be an artist, one needed to be born clever with a paintbrush or having an innate sense of color. That you couldn't study art unless you were innately an artist already.

These days, I believe that anyone can be an artist, because art in itself involves a process. One starts with an idea, or an itch, a wish to communicate, or a wish to learn, and in this manner, conceiving art is just like plunging into science.

One starts with the idea, and perhaps sketches it in miniature form. Perhaps many ideas are sketched, or many permutations of one idea, or even just different parts of an idea. As the artist worries and massages their idea, it begins to take on life -- as this piece is moved over here, and that little dot goes up there, putting a great opening over this way, and so on.

The idea might be sketched in a larger format, or painted, sketched with colored pencil, or built from paper or cardboard or clay. Anything to prototype it and to get closer to the skin, and under the skin -- to better understand how the full-size piece will be.

When starting out, the piece invariably begins by looking bloody and ugly. It feels painful to work with it, laborious, toilsome. It takes work to work with it. Little by little as the life of the artist is breathed into the piece, it takes on life of its own. As the artist plays with it, adds structure and dimension, the piece begins to depart from the original idea and that is when it becomes the art form.

Just like a scientist solving problems under the microscope -- patiently creating just the right environment for her bacteria to multiply, so too is the artist solving problems and, more often, making the best of each situation. If this trick doesn't work, then let's go this other route. If we can't afford this, then let's try doing that instead.

Well. If we can't print all of the prints right now, then let's scan the contact sheets and put the digital images up on the Web. Let's create a blog!

Just this one change -- creating a blog -- has altered the dynamics of our project immensely. We have begun to learn from one another, and to learn from hearing from you.

As it turns out -- here's where an artist speaks as a zoologist: the social interaction becomes part of the art project.

Life is art. Art is a process.

Life is also a process.

M A D A M, I ' M A D A M.

Thanks for listening,

Tess

Frame 6: "How I Frame ... Life On the Infinity Setting"

It is true most everyone believes that when one is blind they reside in darkness.

Perhaps some who are blind do, but most friends I know do not. For me I always see the light -- pardon the pun ....

There are days the whirling of the snow like whiteness is such a glare that it is as if someone is shining thousands of white particulate like mini flashlights into my eyeballs. Ouch! Even when I try to close my eyes to sleep they persist.

I digress.... The light can be helpful to me if it is not too bright and overwhelming. This is why taking photos earlier in the day and before the sun sets is better for me -- or on a cloudy day. It is okay for me when there is a bright sunny day if pollution or glare is minimal as well. It just all depends.


Pictures from three to six feet are easiest for me to frame or figure out. It is also easier if I know the area in which I take photos. My gardens -- I have many -- I know intimately. Each plant, old stump, vine, rock, planter and little garden accessory I have placed or planted around something nature has drawn me to. People are easy to place and pose; they generally are patient and will stay where you put them...unless they are naughty and playing me. But if they make noise or giggle I can tell they have moved and they know they have been busted!

What I find more challenging with the camera is that the viewfinder -- a useless necessity for me -- is on the extreme left of the top of the camera. It is therefore a challenge for me to keep the cameral level sometimes when clicking the shutter lever. "If" the viewfinder was dead center in the middle of the camera -- where I believe it logically should be -- it would be easier for me kinesthetically to hold the camera straight when I shoot. Especially this is true when I shoot photos at the infinity setting.

Recently I spent time in Montana, in Lincoln at my brother's spacious property and house. There is a valley with foothills to the Rockies the side of the house faces. I wanted to catch that scene over the little pines growing in their acreage .... I got verbal description, tried very ardently to hold the camera straight, held my breath and snapped the shutter. I took three photos as I wasn't quite sure how my shots would turn out.


I also, when we were leaving, wanted a shot or two of my brother Jeff and his wife, my sissy, Sharon on their front porch veranda waving and holding each other. It was from a great distance as I wanted to have others see the greatness of the house, the prairie and the mountains. I had Jeff talk to me so I could find them and got the tiniest bit of audio description of the scene. I wanted an angle picture but I did not want the camera to tilt.... It was very hard, I admit, and I was not confident of the shot at all so I took two. Infinity -- long photo -- shots are the most difficult for me.

When I frame the close shots I can feel the subject, what is around the subject and if I am unsure I can check it out again if I feel my kinesthetics are off. I have much more confidence in this genre.

Tess is the key to me learning from what shots I take. Our partnership is evolving and I do learn from her every time we have the opportunity to review the work I have done. I have a great deal of respect for the feedback she gives me. It is extremely helpful. My husband anxiously awaits the time he can actually view the prints. Though Bjorn has been with me for over two decades and knows I am capable in many fields, he is having a difficult time understanding my desire to photograph with this particular camera and with the b/w film that he thinks is too difficult to load. I keep telling him, "Wait until you see the photos." He says, "I'm waiting .... When?"


Ah, skeptics! To be fair, Bjorn is more curious than he is a skeptic. And I am thinking probably those who read the blog may be as well. All I know is though I am a very busy professional and busy at home as well, there is something pleasurable about the images I build in my head and the opportunities I make with the camera when those ideas in my head and those images come together in a photograph.

For now ...

Susan - and Inez

Frame 5: When the Left Hand Wants to Know What the Right Hand is Doing (and Other Dilemmas)

After printing contact sheets for the first rolls of film Susan had shot, I had my first dilemma.

During the summer the academic schedule is very short (seven weeks instead of 12). And with making the darkroom available to continuing education students as well as full-time ones, this meant it was open on only a very limited schedule. So no matter how frantically I worked, there was no hope of getting all of the images enlarged during summer quarter. I would have to choose a couple from each roll and wait until the next quarter to make any additional prints.

My dilemma -- whether real or imagined, was this: was it up to me to decide which images would be printed? I am sighted, so I would be making judment based on what I myself interpreted to be interesting and/or thought-provoking. It seemed to me this unfairly edited what Susan had begun, but I could see no way around it. I think each photographer always has a few shots in a roll that they really bond with emotionally during the shoot. If I could find these shots, I might be on the track of minimalist editing and minimizing my own idea of what constitutes a photograph.

With limited darkroom time, I also had to elect not to print on fiber paper -- the archival quality paper professional photographers opt for. I instead used RC paper, the thickly-coated, resinous paper used more for contact sheets and for beginning photography students. This was disappointing, not only from the standpoint of print quality (as fiber paper produces a much richer and more textured image), but from the process itself. While each step takes much longer than RC paper, it is quite a pleasant process, an artistic process. The paper is optically more sensitive and allows less room for clumsiness. In addition to being expensive, it is also thick and fragile. One must pay critical attention to the paper facing, exposure times, filters, times in chemicals and in washing, handling with tongs, rinsing, and be aware of dry-down (the factor by which the image darkens as the paper dries).

On the other hand, working with RC paper -- that practically bullet proof standard used by students everywhere -- had a distinct advantage. It is bulletproof and has a much better chance of surviving over-development, tonging, scratches, and the like. When lab hours are shorter, the darkroom is packed every minute and quite literally becomes a pressure cooker. The medium you print with can be a determinant of success....

Feverish students slam their prints from tank to tank, tonging the prints, flipping them over in their hurry to find their own, and contaminating tanks by insufficiently draining prints while moving them. A fiber print in this environment needs babysitting by a fire-emitting dragon. With 14 enlarging stations in the larger of the darkrooms, the room almost bounces with energy -- especially on days when someone tunes the boom box loudly to trash-talk radio. A day spent guarding fiber prints -- alternating between (fire-breathing) zone and (clawed) man-to-man defense -- leaves me exhausted, my apron spotted with chemicals and my hands stained.

As a social experiment, the darkroom is the only place I've encountered where -- depending on the mix of users -- so much time is spent in "baloney contests". Typically it is the younger men engaging in this pursuit, as they wait for their prints in the different chemical baths. One will state an outrageous opinion of some obscure fact. A second will throw down another inflated opinion, and the aggressiveness of his assertion will either lead to the first person throwing in additional information (either about his original topic or the one newly introduced) or to his backing down in awe of the new arrival's mastery of his subject. If the latter happens, the second person then has the opportunity to further expound on his topic and might end his soliloquy by throwing down yet a third blatantly inflated opinion. One approach to avoiding these interactions is walking away. However, in the darkroom, one is captive to the timing of one's prints, which I take to be the entire reason for these activities in the first place; the participants want an audience. (You can always tell a seasoned photographer: they are the ones wearing earphones and are oblivious to the environment.)

As I went through the print process, I realized I had another decision to make: would I work the negatives -- using split filters, dodging and burning, cropping, and re-composing to bring out the theoretical best in each print? I decided that this would be a mis-representation of how the subjects came together into their composition.

When I looked at Susan's film, I could see a pleasant happenstance of composition. Susan was composing each of her shots with considerable thought and care, and with a great attention to detail. But in addition to the composed subject matter it was obvious Susan was attracting some happy circumstances to each photo. It could be the velvet touch of the sun on a leaf, or the fact that Nellie was walking out of the frame when the photo was taken, making for a sweet gesture. In each photo there was something that was a "happening" -- an attraction, if you will -- that had the touch of the divine.

And so, I used filters to bring out the texture of each shot, but I did not correct across the print for areas of exposure. This, I thought, was an artifact of shooting by feel and it should definitely be part of the resulting image.

This project was to be all about the printed image, but in the end, I realized that I could scan the contact sheets and post digitally the images I was not able to print during this first time in the darkroom.

That posed an entirely new set of dilemmas....