Flâneur visuel

Les KRIMS in Rochester NY (September 2010)

2010-09-10T05:45:00.000-07:00

Les Krims at the GEH.

The emperor’s self-designed new clothes. On the nakedness and rawness of esthetic erring and treasures of imaginative energy wasted.

© Bruno Chalifour, September 10, 2010.

[After listening to him at the GEH on September 9, 2010 presenting his work but above all–time wise–renting against academia (but not relinquishing his tenure position), “the left, the communists and the liberals” and a few feminists. Using blind insults, angry stereotypes, outrageous caricatures).]

Listening to Les Krims is enlightening. The sheer blindness and extreme narrow-mindedness of his thinking, in spite of a somewhat brilliant imagination, is in fact enlightening. It raises the issue of content in a piece of art, and how relevant it should be regarding the very definition of the term.

At first sight (no pun intended), Krims’s very elaborate tableaux are entertaining: they seem to combine the shock of the new and the freshness of provocation. They stay with the beholder and his/her legendary eye and alleged idiosyncratic taste (also alluded to by Krims, another cliché on the road to hell I guess). Some of his images have accompanied me for decades and a “Les Krims” is easy to identify. The guy had style, his own often-rehashed style–the one for which he is known and with which he will be buried, the one he seems to be leaving by the wayside on his way to Photoshop and HDR. When he strays from it using HDR the way a college student would, the results are just disappointing. So many years of practice to come to that! Banging one’s head too many times against the same relenting issues leaves traces. Krims is a casualty of the world he has carved for himself out of resentment, anger, and outrageous positioning towards his own world–as proved many times by his reiterated lashing against academia that provides him with a living from which he has not walked away. Put your actions where your mouth is Les! Les pretends to be Don Quixote: he does have his wind-mills and his Sanchos (the willing side-kicks of his photographs, sometimes his own students) but he lacks the guts and the action.

Krims’s world seems to have something not so much of Dada but of surrealism in its challenging of established values, its association of unlikely elements, and maybe, to a point its use of the human, often lightly-clad, body, especially female. It is definitely a male vision and a male’s world. Beyond the entertainment and the rubbing of ideas that Krims’s work surely generates, what had always bothered me was its overwhelming irony, acidity and repeated, overstated tone, its strange relationship with sexuality, the female body, including his own mother’s body. I have no competence in psychology, psycho-analysis, or even psychiatry, for lack of a better word it feels strange if not weird, it feels singularly deprived of tenderness, love or even empathy (even his most recent HDR “street” portraits convey that very same impression). Les Krims has become a blind, bitter, pontifying old man. It is disheartening especially when you compare him to some of the photographic academic “liberals” against whom he constantly and indiscriminately lashes: Nathan Lyons, Carl Chiarenza, John Pfahl, Jerry Uelsmann… Krims never does it namely, except against a few feminist extremist of the 1980s and the Society for Photographic Education, of which the above-mentioned luminaries (and Krims’s local colleagues, two of whom Lyons and Chiarenza even attended his talk at the GEH) were co-founders.

Krims, just as Peter Witkin has, has created his own idiosyncratic world and brings it to us. However in many cases it is a narrow and closed world within which his imagination thrives. It lacks the humanist and artistic background and motivation of Witkins’s world. Can diatribe be art? Can art be the result of a mind, a world that has narrowed itself to a cell? At his point the reader may have figured out my answer to the question. Art and somewhat content may be in the eye of the beholder (who must be full of it by now), but I know many a beholder that would agree with me and with whom I would agree. Relativism too is relative and after all revisionism is there to be revised, isn’t it?

Bruno Chalifour, Rochester 2010.

Fall 2008 Update...

2008-12-13T12:57:00.000-08:00

December 2008:

Summer and Fall went by...

Summer was mainly dedicated to:

-taking care of my new show "High Falls" (13"x40" panoramic images) after its being shown in Limoges in the spring at the Pavillon du Verdurier. As usual I had an interesting conversation on it with Gérard (Desplanques).

-doing my research for the Henri Cartier-Bresson symposium (see below).

-teaching my now usual annual workshop in the Rencontres d'Arles–which I always enjoy.It was a very diverse group this year (not that different from the previous ones though), ranging from dedicated amateurs to dedicated professionals (photographers and gallery owners). There were some interesting exhibitions and the showing of the books running for the European Publisher's Award was quite impressive. I enjoyed the night projection dedicated to Koudelka's work in 1968 in Prague and met some very interesting personalities and photographers among whom Shai Kremer, a sympathetic young Israeli photographer who photographs the Israeli military complex in the wake of Richard Misrach and Simon Norfolk, Vanessa Winship, a wonderfully sensitive photographer whose work in black and white is highly recommendable... and all the usual followers of the festival although I missed Yvette Troispoux's alert eyes this year. My students seemed to have enjoyed the workshop that felt as if it were ending too soon.

On the way down to Arles I stopped and spent the day in Toulouse with Stéphane. He and his wife were expecting, and close to delivery (she was and could not joy us on that hot day spent visiting the Galerie du Château d'Eau and the new Toulouse art space, Les Abattoirs). Then two days with François walking in the Pyrénées and photographing in Ariège, above St Girons.
On the way back I stopped and photographed in Argelès and Collioure

and then I spent the rest of my stay in Limousin revisiting the Rebeyrolles museum in Eymoutiers (which I also did in the fall). I am always baffled and mesmerized by the quality and power of his painting.

Then back to the US just on time to photograph Valerie's cousin wedding–my second wedding this summer with the D3 after the problematic use of the SB 80 in Couzeix for Philippe.

The raw format saved the images where the communication between flash and body did not work. I am going to turn the images resulting from into another Blurb book.

Then back home to work on my History of Photography course at UB, and to sort out and print a few images.

Fall 2008 saw a lot of interesting activities and opportunities:

-my proposal for the Henry Cartier-Bresson 100th-anniversary international conference was accepted. My topic was "Cartier-Bresson et l'Amérique". The presentation was given last October in the Centre International de Rencontres/Château de Cerisy (Calvados). It rained the whole time but the symposium was interesting and enjoyable on all levels (other presentations, co-presenters, organization, location, accommodation, food...)

Henri Cartier-Bresson symposium (Cerisy library, Oct. 2008)

-this gave me an opportunity to see a few shows in Paris, meet Roland Quilici (a co-writer for www.photophiles.com and my main source of daily information on the French photographic scene),

Roland (left) and Alain Rio (another Photophiles writer) in Mortemar (87)

family and friends. Philippe embarked me on the plateau de Millevaches on an assignment photographing a vintage Ferrari rally. Fortunately the day was gorgeous and the local foie gras and omelette aux cèpes in Tarnac excellent.

-Time in Limoges and Pierre-Buffière (not forgetting a visit to Gérard and to l'espace Rebeyrolles) was enjoyable as usual.

Pierre-Buffière (87) from my window
overlooking the Breuilh valley {childhood memories].

St Germain des Prés (oct. 2008)

-I taught a History of Photography course at SUNY Buffalo which was a lot of work as no supporting book quite satisfied me: I had to redesign all the lectures and create supporting audio-visual documents. I must say I enjoy being challenged and engaged this way and it allowed me to update my teaching supporting materials. The room that was allocated to the course was extremely well equipped and the class, although very quiet–I guess history is not a very debatable topic [I thought it was though]-turned out to be a pleasant group. On the whole, their final presentations were more than satisfactory, some were creative and lively, and it looks as if they have learnt a few things.] I tried to "anchor" a few key facts, notions, concepts and images through repetition and reinforcement rather than bury them under a sea of... facts, dates and debatable arguments. Efficiency first, hoping to open a few doors for those who would like to investigate further, and bring some light over a topic that, according to the initial test I gave, looked pretty obscure to most of them. The audience ranged from freshmen to graduate students.

-I taught 2 full workshops at Community Darkroom: my "usual" "Landscape" and "Snapshot to Series." I had a good attendance and participation, not to mention the fact that several former students were taking it again. Their progress is a joy to witness and participate in.

Current state of affairs:

-I had the smart idea of designing a 9-page final test for my UB course and am buried under 270 pages waiting to be graded.

-I have to finish preparing the course on the state of Contemporary Photography for next semester.

-doing more work on the Mendon Ponds project:

-working on 3 separate self-published book projects.

Mendon Ponds (another Book project)

-I have to complete the final editing/slashing of my Cartier-Bresson presentation for publication by Textuel.
-I have to recontact the Médiathèque in Gosier (Guadeloupe) as the intended summer exhibition featuring my work and book "Kazes Kwéoles" (Blurb) has not happened in spite of our agreement. Tropical operating mode...

On the recent improvements to my work and life style, I have upgraded a few tools... (which just gave me more work):
-my Panasonic DMC-LX2 to the LX3 model [zoom starting at 24 mm (35 mm equiv.), max. aperture of f.2, and better behavior (less noise) at 400 and 800 iso]

...which results have been meeting expectations with the exception of noise at 400 and 800 iso, better than with the LX2 but still with room for improvement–not to mention the fact that with the new raw format (RW2), there is no way to upgrade Photoshop CS3 for it except move up to CS4. Same with Lightroom whose version #2 has not been upgraded for it yet... not to mention Aperture (always slower than Adobe).

LX3 against the sun by very cold morning.

-updating image-processing software [time and money, the price of competence I guess.

...and now, getting psychologically ready another winter in Rochester,NY.

Lake Ontario at Charlotte Beach

Du blues, du blues, du blues... du blues,

2008-03-22T13:43:00.001-07:00

2008-03-22T13:42:00.001-07:00

RE comme dans Ricky Earl !

2008-03-22T13:36:00.001-07:00

2008-03-22T13:35:00.001-07:00

Du blues, encore du Blues...

2008-03-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

Ricky Earl Band. Denver, mars 2008

Denver Blues

2008-03-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

6 jours à Denver...
pour la conférence nationale (et annuelle) de la Société pour l'Éducation Photographique (www.spe.org).

Premiers pas dans le Colorado.

Ce qui a été plus remarquable ce sont les rencontres musicales.

En premier lieu avec Ricky Earl, guitariste de blues, émule de BB King, et son épouse Cherise au Jazz @ Jack's, puis dans un bouiboui du sud ouest de Denver, doté d'un éclairage H.I.É. ! Il a donc fallu être créatif et avoir confiance en Nikon !

Puis 2 jours plus tard, toujours au Jazz @ Jack's, Nelson Rangell, le frère de Bobby qui vit en France et que j'ai rencontré Il y a plus de 15 ans à Limoges à l'occasion de concerts et du CD de Momo auxquels il a prêté son talent de saxophoniste, flûtiste et clarinetiste. J'ai pris de lui quelques unes de mes photos préférées de jazz. Le groupe s'appelait alors "Jazz Affair" et se composait aussi de Tony Bonfils (batterie), et Patrice Peyrieras (claviers, piano). Bonfils et Rangell jouaient alors aussi pour l'ONJ (Orchestre National de Jazz), quant à Patrice, un limougeaud de réputation au moins nationale qui avait accpmpagné la chanteuse Barbara et qui avait fondé son propre studio d'enregistrement à Landouge.
J'ai un CD de Nelson Rangell, acheté il y a quelques années–ce que les américains appellent "schmoozie" jazz, le genre Kenny J ; pas ma tasse de thé. Mais le Nelson nouveau est bien différent, très proche de son frère en fait, et jouant lui aussi du/des saxophone(s), et de la flûte. Une très plaisante soirée de jazz... et de photographie. Après m'être présenté à Rangell, celui-ci m'a encouragé à prendre les photos que je voulais–ce que j'ai fait de façon parsimonieuse afin de respecter le public présent.

On Sponsoring the Arts

2007-04-21T12:44:00.000-07:00

Sponsoring the Fine Arts: Whose Responsibility.

The Fine Arts As Expression of a Specific Culture

All successful cultures and civilizations have expressed their achievements, power, sophistication and wealth through the hands of an elite of their skilled, talented, experienced, and creative members/workers
Let us first go back to the original meaning of “art”: a set of perfected skills, the result of training and practice in a particular domain. These skills are applied to raw materials for the production of our physical and intellectual environment (everyday objects, tools, but also books or music).
By extension, during the Italian Renaissance, in Florence, arte (or arti in the plural) designated groups of professionals sharing the same interests in their trades or occupations. Arte was a synonym for trade association or guild. The arti controlled the training, education, quality of execution, pricing of their members. These communities created close ties and a shared feeling of responsibility toward the image of the group in the eyes of others and in their own eyes. They often sought the expression of their power, success, and sophistication through the production (and financing) of refined cultural objects expressing their values in esthetic and metaphoric terms. This engendered the notion of “Fine Arts.”
In the pursuit of such ideals and absolute as “truth” or “beauty,” refined artifacts had to be the created by an elite of craftsmen thoroughly mastering their tools. Thence, after the craftsmen, came the artists and soon with them, financers and sponsors. Because of the goals and content of the fine arts, because of their high production cost–linked to their makers’ excellence in skills and creativity–, because of the dedication, time, resource that such activities entail, the financers of the fine arts have always been the political, financial, religious powers, and wealthy individuals. All three powers have the means to collect money from the members of their societies, and invest it in expressions of the human mind (cultural production). Taxes, profits, alms, gifts are ways that help a society function, part of the “social contract.” The need and benefits of investing the resource of a community in cultural productions are manifold. Fine art objects are expressions of the soul of the very communities that finance them.

Of religious sponsoring of the arts

Let us, now, have a look at the current state of affairs in our (fine) art world. The church(es), or other metaphysical unifiers and spiritual powers, some of the most active sponsors of the arts of the past, have drastically shrunk their support to the fine arts due to their loss of control, and financial clout, as well as of a situation of disputed relevance and competition.

The National Endowment for the Arts

The political support of the fine arts, after the hay-days of the National Endowment of the Arts (created in1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” program), has also drastically shrunk. From 1965 to 2000–according to a report published by the NEA itself in 2000 and available on the web–the number of non-profit theaters was multiplied by six, opera companies by 5, symphony orchestras by two, dance companies by 18. During that period, the projects of thousands of American artists were directly sponsored by the NEA, and the United States became a truly dominant cultural power, and model–a position that is still reflected by its reigning status in the art market.
In the thirty years that followed its creation, the budget of the NEA had grown from some $ 3,000,000 in 1966 to close to $ 172,500,000 in 1993. Even taking inflation into account, it had been a very substantial increase. This, in a very profound way, has allowed the country to establish the most democratic means of producing images, photography, and by extension cinema as the two truly American fine-arts of the twentieth century. The American production in these fields has definitely excelled, and has served as a model for the rest of the world. If cinema has essentially been a capitalist venture (supported by investments and profits), fine-art photography owes its prominence to institutional and political support: educational institutions (especially universities), the NEA, and foundations such as the Guggenheim foundation–most prominently among many other foundations–and private sponsors (Chase, Exxon, Seagram, Hallmarks, Getty…). But the news is sad for artists, in our brave new world, share-holders reign, and anonymously dictate policies, want dollars in return for their financial investments. Ethical, responsible, philosophical investments have gradually taken a back seat at board-meetings as recently exemplified by Eron or Halliburton.
Regarding the public funding of the fine arts, from its $ 172,500,000 budget in 1994, the NEA went down to $ 99,500,000 in 1996. The same year, all individual artists’ fellowships were totally eliminated (except for literature fellowships).

How the market place can sometimes endanger depth and quality in a work of art

Today’s artists cannot rely on the social and cultural responsibility and generosity of institutions, whether private or public, in the way they used to. This may have dire consequences on the fine arts. It constantly causes the elimination of some serious artists from the art scene. The artists have to dedicate less time and serious investment in their works “to get a day job,” or produce less profound art to meet the immediate need of the market for decoration and entertainment–from the bubbly “fun art” of a Jeff Koons, to the provocative or shocking art (in spite of the classical form it usually assumes) made for the thrill and impact of it by such individuals as Damien Hirst, Matthew Barney, Andreas Serrano. There is sometimes a fine line between using “spectacle” as an ingredient of art, and using the disguise of fine art to only produce spectacle where real, humanistic, ethic content has disappeared, where the fine arts have been eviscerated of their quasi transcendental, if not sacred, content, role and value.

What history shows us

When expanding societies of tradesmen or warriors–the two are often combined–stop investing part of their revenues in the production of fine arts, this has always been, so far, the first signs of their demises and later decadences (the history of all great ancient cities, empires exemplifies this). The decrease in the production of fine art has often been the symptom of deeper crises. Do we want this to happen here, and be the ones responsible for it?

What can we do?

The solutions are the responsibility of every single citizen. The more prominent one is in one’s society, the more responsibilities are bestowed on her/him. The members of any democratic system can express their wishes to the bodies (Congress, Senate, County, City) that they elected. Policies can be made, changed to sponsor the arts. Individual citizens can also reinvest a part of the success of their professional activities into the sponsoring of the arts of their time. It is up to every single one of us to roll up our sleeves and pick up the responsibilities that others have relinquished, or failed to meet. It is up to us to do it in an enlightened and enlightening way. Supporting living artists, NOW, by buying their works, commissioning them is an easy step. It is often more economical to buy new contemporary art than the works of old masters. It makes more sense for the defense and promotion of the art of our time. It is the only way to bequeath a sense of who we are to the future generations. There are, of course, local artists of quality and depth all around us.

Bruno Chalifour
Artist, art critic and consultant.

An assignment: On the Purpose of Art in the XXth Century.

2007-04-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

Of the Evolution of Artistic Sensibilities.

PART 1: The Birth of Conceptual Art

The Fine Arts As Expression of a Specific Culture
All successful cultures and civilizations have expressed their achievements, power, sophistication and wealth through the hands of an elite of their skilled, talented, experienced, and creative members/workers
The original meaning of “art” was as follows: a set of perfected skills, the result of training and practice in a particular domain. These skills are applied to raw materials for the production of our physical and intellectual environment (everyday objects, tools, including books or music).
By extension, during the Italian Renaissance, in Florence, arte (or arti in the plural) designated groups of professionals sharing the same interests in their trades or occupations. Arte was a synonym for trade association or guild. The arti controlled the training, education of their members, as well as the quality of execution, and pricing of their performances. These communities created close ties and a shared a feeling of responsibility toward the image of the group in the eyes of others, and in their own eyes. They often sought the expression of their power, success, and sophistication through the production (and financing) of refined cultural objects expressing their values in esthetic and metaphoric terms. This engendered the notion of “Fine Arts.”
In the pursuit of the expression of such ideals and absolute as “truth” or “beauty,” or, even more mundanely, power, refined artifacts had to be the created by an elite of craftsmen thoroughly mastering their tools. Thence, after the craftsmen, came the artists who added heightened content, style, subjectivity to form, and soon with them, financers and sponsors. Because of the goals and content of the fine arts, because of their high production cost–linked to their makers’ excellence in skills and creativity, and the materials used–, because of the dedication, time, resource that such activities entail, the financers of the fine arts have always been the political, financial, religious powers, as well as wealthy individuals. All three powers have the means to collect money from the members of their societies, and invest it in expressions of the human mind (cultural production). Taxes, profits, alms, gifts are ways that help a society function; they are part of a “social contract” where a common “kitty” is created. The need and benefits of investing the resource of a community in cultural productions are manifold. Fine art objects are expressions of the soul of the very communities that finance them.

Revolutions

The eighteenth century ended with two great revolutions, the American one in 1776, the French one in 1789–the latter somewhat more radical than the former in that it not only eliminated royal power but in its wake the powers and influences of the whole nobility and the church, the two biggest sponsors of the fine arts so far–which would generate some changes in the motivations, goals, and expectations of artists.
The nineteenth century bought the industrial revolution and a different kind of financial and political power that would compete with land-based wealth and ultimately win.

In the western world, once the ideas of immutable power (kingly, inherited from a Christian god), religion had been deeply challenged, a whole area of the art world turned away from the “noble” subjects and the Greek and Roman antiquities, symbols of the Ancien Regime (the old classical political world), and became interested in more mundane subjects.

La Fée Photographie

With the industrial revolution came the perfect medium for its art: photography and the moving image. It shook the art world, painting, sculpture had to move forward. The notion of Avant-Garde was born. Artists had to think ahead of their time instead of looking back; they had to produce new work, generate new approaches, new ideas. Art started to look at itself, its value, function. Art for art’s sake became a leitmotiv, ¬and with it the poverty and bohemian life-style with which many artists became associated–Van Gogh being a perfect example. Classical salons were eclipsed by those showing the outrageous works of the avant-garde–the first Salon des Refusés opened in Paris in 1863.
After somewhat struggling with defining their role and status among the established arts–Pictorialism being one aspect of this quest, photography trying to emulate a painterly style and somewhat stray from the advantages of “mechanical reproduction”–photographers settled for what their tools could do best, and stopped emulating painters. Suddenly the painters found themselves freed of the burden of having to reproduce the visible world as faithfully as possible. With mechanization and technology, artists could spend more time on the ideas in their art, less on the process of making it. With this new approach came such smart artistic provocateurs as Marcel Duchamp, displaying a urinal baptized Fountain on the wall of a New York art show (The Society of Independent Artist exhibition) in 1917, trying to prove that the idea/concept was more important than the object, that the context in which a piece was seen also defined its status. An esthetic piece in the restroom of an inn is mere decoration (or “tool”), on a museum or gallery wall, in a prestigious private collection, it suddenly becomes art–the difference lies in the idea, the choice of the artist. Ready-made, minimal, and conceptual arts were born.

Bruno Chalifour
Artist, art critic and consultant for RenAnArt.com.

061201

2006-12-10T09:24:00.000-08:00

This blog has just been opened, just after working on a French text about Richard Misrach for wikipedia.fr. More to come...next year as I will soon be leaving for Guadeloupe.