raillery at the CuMCuP 2
[continued from part 1] i was quite excited – though admittedly extremely cautiously so – by the prospects of what i might see here, being at least "somewhat" familiar with what the possibilities may erupt into. the additional background/supplementary material seemed to suggest the CMCP may have opened up a little – or at least released the grippe from their little brown aperture for maybe once – but, over the course of some 5 days' study of all this stuff, it appears i was wrong.
what would i give any kind of appreciation to of the lot?
Ron Benner's work i like; the layering & rephotographing, transforming a found image of (well, a "looked for" image might be more apt) Sam McLeod's news photo (& this is from a neg or photo, no screening from the offset printing process, so Benner's done some work here) into an "express"ive texture was a treat: the photograph never does get left behind like unattended freight but brought along for the trauma of the ride, ever changed as it moves from panel to panel. & thank this fellow for being polite & responsible enough to cite the source of the image that was not his. others in this show – namely, Roy Arden & Louise Noguchi – did not. in fact, "her" locomotive panel – by itself – appeared in a further advertisement (in the X-PRESS) identified as a photograph by Louise Noguchi, which it clearly could not be. whose photograph is it?
[O.Winston] Link's stuff is good, even if i have a preference for the uncooked/candid composition. there's a tension lurking throughout his frames that's quite pleasantly unsettling.
(they're closing: i've gotta hurry now or come back again – which it looks likely i'll have to do.)
(picking up where i left off a few pages back:) Glenn Rudolph's stuff was perhaps the most engaging work for me in terms of straight rail photography: formally staid but wonderful departure points for one's own invented narratives as support structures for the photos they inevitably lead one back to.
i'd also cast a vote for Douglas Walker's extended work, a pleasure to get lost in the textures of in their gradations & abruptions.
James Welling's work, while successful in its dark evocation of the technology, ultimately was the batch that threw the whole lot into question. 1st thing in the door, one encounters a freight leaving Smiths Falls, heading W onto the Beckwith Street bridge & the main line track to Toronto. the significance of these Smiths Falls shots is admittedly different for us than for the average viewer: to get anywhere by freight from Ottawa, one 1st makes the daily out of Walkley yard to Smiths Falls [at that time: it's no longer running], where connections can be made for Montréal, Toronto or North Bay [nor is that latter any longer an extant run] (or, minimally, S to, i believe, Brockville on another local run) &, from them, the rest of the country. as such, it's a place we can be said to frequent. also as such, it's a place we have photographed in some detail (it's also a place where a lot of rail fanatics gather to shoot their standard "wedge shots" of various units & other equipment (we have also documented the documenteurs)). given this, it's no surprise to discover many similar shots in our own piles of material. when we consider which images we have used for various public purposes, images such as these were always on the low end of the scale of intrigue. we are to assume these are his good shots? if this is true, then this is indeed a sad case.
i have a hard time even coming up with a lowkey enough vocabulary to respond to the rest of the stuff: Vera Frenkel's installation reeks of selfimportance & pestilential poignancy (i've nothing against poignancy but i do not have any sympathy for those who go to such great lengths to try to attain it), an overblown mismanagement of every medium she dabbles in. Murray Favro's construction was a cheesy bit of obviousness (& the photographer who shot it for the catalogue, like a true puppet, shot it straight!). o, gad, it was all so subjective & meaningful & academically correct & buffered by the sophists' statements (whoops, "artists' statements") in that horrendous catalogue of the show just in case the philistines were too much like Uncle Slug & incapable of "getting" just how sophisticated it all is.
[continue to part 3]
raillery at the CuMCuP 2
[continued from part 1] i was quite excited – though admittedly extremely cautiously so – by the prospects of what i might see here, being at least "somewhat" familiar with what the possibilities may erupt into. the additional background/supplementary material seemed to suggest the CMCP may have opened up a little – or at least released the grippe from their little brown aperture for maybe once – but, over the course of some 5 days' study of all this stuff, it appears i was wrong.
what would i give any kind of appreciation to of the lot?
Ron Benner's work i like; the layering & rephotographing, transforming a found image of (well, a "looked for" image might be more apt) Sam McLeod's news photo (& this is from a neg or photo, no screening from the offset printing process, so Benner's done some work here) into an "express"ive texture was a treat: the photograph never does get left behind like unattended freight but brought along for the trauma of the ride, ever changed as it moves from panel to panel. & thank this fellow for being polite & responsible enough to cite the source of the image that was not his. others in this show – namely, Roy Arden & Louise Noguchi – did not. in fact, "her" locomotive panel – by itself – appeared in a further advertisement (in the X-PRESS) identified as a photograph by Louise Noguchi, which it clearly could not be. whose photograph is it?
[O.Winston] Link's stuff is good, even if i have a preference for the uncooked/candid composition. there's a tension lurking throughout his frames that's quite pleasantly unsettling.
(they're closing: i've gotta hurry now or come back again – which it looks likely i'll have to do.)
(picking up where i left off a few pages back:) Glenn Rudolph's stuff was perhaps the most engaging work for me in terms of straight rail photography: formally staid but wonderful departure points for one's own invented narratives as support structures for the photos they inevitably lead one back to.
i'd also cast a vote for Douglas Walker's extended work, a pleasure to get lost in the textures of in their gradations & abruptions.
James Welling's work, while successful in its dark evocation of the technology, ultimately was the batch that threw the whole lot into question. 1st thing in the door, one encounters a freight leaving Smiths Falls, heading W onto the Beckwith Street bridge & the main line track to Toronto. the significance of these Smiths Falls shots is admittedly different for us than for the average viewer: to get anywhere by freight from Ottawa, one 1st makes the daily out of Walkley yard to Smiths Falls [at that time: it's no longer running], where connections can be made for Montréal, Toronto or North Bay [nor is that latter any longer an extant run] (or, minimally, S to, i believe, Brockville on another local run) &, from them, the rest of the country. as such, it's a place we can be said to frequent. also as such, it's a place we have photographed in some detail (it's also a place where a lot of rail fanatics gather to shoot their standard "wedge shots" of various units & other equipment (we have also documented the documenteurs)). given this, it's no surprise to discover many similar shots in our own piles of material. when we consider which images we have used for various public purposes, images such as these were always on the low end of the scale of intrigue. we are to assume these are his good shots? if this is true, then this is indeed a sad case.
i have a hard time even coming up with a lowkey enough vocabulary to respond to the rest of the stuff: Vera Frenkel's installation reeks of selfimportance & pestilential poignancy (i've nothing against poignancy but i do not have any sympathy for those who go to such great lengths to try to attain it), an overblown mismanagement of every medium she dabbles in. Murray Favro's construction was a cheesy bit of obviousness (& the photographer who shot it for the catalogue, like a true puppet, shot it straight!). o, gad, it was all so subjective & meaningful & academically correct & buffered by the sophists' statements (whoops, "artists' statements") in that horrendous catalogue of the show just in case the philistines were too much like Uncle Slug & incapable of "getting" just how sophisticated it all is.
[continue to part 3]