NEW YEARS EVE
Today I sat in Zuma coffee shop in Marshall and ordered a bowl of chili, which I slowly ate as I typed for an hour. Typing is my main exercise, but typing also keeps me awake and alive. There are other exercises that I am supposed to do each day to keep me alive and supple. Lying on my back on the bed and lifting both my hands and legs like a crab for ten seconds is one of them, but I feel stupid and it is a little painful. I prefer to exercise by typing.
After typing for an hour I noticed a man at the next table who was unwrapping black and white photographs with abstract designs printed on metal which he was hanging on the wall of Zuma where they would stay for the next two months. This woke me up even more than typing. I learned from him how he got his abstract patterns of snow or ice or leaves printed. A German company will print your photographs in the best possible way. Each 12”x12” photographs is printed on metal with a thin foam backing with attached metal strips to use for hanging the photographs at a cost of $100. He had about 20 photographs that he and his daughter were putting up.
In his prior life he was a city administrator in Springfield, Missouri. Now he is retired, living in Marshall, and doing what makes him feel most alive, taking and showing photographs. For me writing and photographing along with travel and surrounding myself in my apartment with objects that enliven me by their presence are what stimulate me along with friends and family.
But what his abstract photographs made me wonder about was how he and I are moved by different kinds of photographs and also by the degree to which we are perfectionists. He is obviously deeply touched by abstract black and white patterns which are so abstract that it is difficult to know what patterns in nature they are of. And he is obviously a perfectionist.
I am moved by faces most of all in whatever country I am in. The walls of my apartment are covered by faces, of people in India, of family members, of people in parades in Marshall, of Warren Wilson College students. My 8×8 inch Mixtile prints cost about $5 apiece whenever Mixtiles.com has a sale.
My prints aren’t as well printed as his and printing on metal is more expensive than printing on paper. But I don’t care. My prints are well printed and what matters to me is not how well printed the photographs of faces are but how much the faces of individuals, usually closeup and looking me in the eye, touch me. It is the subject that matters for me, not the resolution of the camera or the sharpness of the printing.
I once attended a camera club in Asheville. Most of the discussion was about the quality of the cameras and of the distinction between film and digital photography. Not much talk was about what touched people enough to get them to photograph it. So I stopped going.
But whether a photograph of an abstract pattern or the photograph of a face is more compelling has little to do with the subject, it is entirely in the eye of the beholder. A great deal of contemporary art photography has the abstract quality of abstract painting and is highly praised and hangs on museum walls. For some reason abstraction doesn’t touch me as much as faces, but for other people it is the other way around.
And that leads to the question of what good art is or what great art is. If what touches us is in the eye of the beholder, then the art of some people which touches just a few people can be just as compelling for a small group of people as very different subjects that for some reason are compelling to a large group of people. It is almost a popularity contest, and more than that once an artist becomes popular the group think that any large tribe or group exerts brings along huge numbers of people who stare blankly at a photograph or painting and because of group pressure think how marvelous it is.
It seems to me we have to create in whatever way pleases us, and not be too concerned with what other people think.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 