Victoria Bridge, Aberdeen; black and white painting and early photography

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Victoria Bridge, Aberdeen, oil on card, 16.6 x 15.2 cm -  available

This dates back to September, and is one of my black and whites which is most influenced by early photography. 

Ergo, there is an emphasis on a soft atmosphere. The influence can also be seen  in the presentation of motif. That is, a well known city sight is depicted, very recognisably, from a distance in which most of it can be seen, often with few figures and little  sense of movement (this last point is somewhat reduced here, given the sky).

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Paper boats, picture; painting, travel and photography

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 Boats, picture

I`m beginning to miss painting a lot. 

I have been taking  daily photos daily. I`ve found the camera and the photo editing tools to be superb for examining objects, their condition, presence and significance. The immediate realism of photos, and the faith we have in the veracity of the photo makes this an excellent medium to do this, to discuss memory and give a concrete base to a text. I mainly use sill life photography to do this, but also medium distance photos of buildings and in nature.

I find the "hunter-and-prey" aspect of photography unpleasant. I dislike the secretiveness of its black box processing. Shooting people is highly unpleasant, a controlling and highly unequal ritual in which the person being photographed (the subject) is  pushed around and ultimately objectified, with very little control over the way they are represented.

  I suspect that, as an art form, photography attracts a certain profile and that profile contains a disproportionately large number of very guarded,  controlling, and possible abusive individuals. There have been a series of cases with fashion photographers being exposed as such. Nice people who become photographers are aware of portrait photography's unsavoury aspects, and attempt to engage their subjects more democratically in the representational process. But I suspect it is intrinsic to photography with it's tiny viewfinders and hidden image recording.

I found the camera very good for photographing trees and medium distance nature. It's responsiveness to light and detail is incredible. At a longer distance, with more general views, I found the camera brought forward cliches, or at best a certain obviousness.

Some things I miss from painting:

1.  The physicality of paint is marvelous. It has three-dimensionality: texture.  Photography is smooth and dreamlike: Apollonian.

2. Mixing colours is marvelous. And somehow always surprising. And I have a big batch of expensive paints waiting for me in Scotland.

3. Painting landscapes is very "out there". It's a declaration. Yes, that is uncomfortable, but it isn't furtive like photography. I like sorting out the equipment and deciding what to take.

4. Lugging stuff- palettes, brushes, tripod around is annoying. But packing and unpacking and the ritualistic processes most painters develop over years makes them very aware of how their work is a self-conscious construction.

5. In painting you can respond physically, with marks and gestures and they are layered so you convey a notion of process in time.. There's an eye-emotion- hand-  chain which allows mark-making itself to be way of conveying meaning. Photography is dreamlike. I like this too, but I miss the former, and how difficult it is.

Fingers crossed: eventually the COVID-19 situation will be resolved and I can do a painting trip: a massive 6 monther from Ecuador down to the tip of Patagonia. Or something like that.

 

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Stem; photography and painting

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Stem

I don't know what this it, and I'm not sure how I came upon it.

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Something I like about photography is the ease with which detail is described. The camera is an instrument and it allows one to see better.

This might seem terribly obvious but if you have been painting for ages it is really a complete reversal of the relationship you have with your tools. Painting cannot be revelatory in this way; what you get on the painting is what you put, gradually, and that process doesn't bring the artist many surprises about the motif.

 With photography you ca go in with a lens and then in again further enlarging when editing on the computer. Into other realities.

This process of revelation is nicely demonstrated in examinations of the "Badgeman" photo, in relation to the JFK assassination.

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