Stalking Lee Friedlander, Part 1 - "America by Car"

Colorado, 2007.  America by Car, by Lee Friedlander. — Colorado, 2007. *America by Car*, by Lee Friedlander.

John Szarkowski was the director of photography at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1962 until 1991. Szarkowski curated the New Documents exhibit in 1967 that showcased work by Lee Friedlander alongside Diane Arbus and Gary Winogrand. The exhibition was significant in that the photographers shown incorporated a fresh personal expressiveness in their work that had been omitted in photography up until that point in the 20th Century. This could be seen as Friedlander’s entry nod from the ivory tower, but I get Szarkowski’s perspective and regardless of his declaration of the brilliance, vision and talent in this troika of photographers, believe that they were/are incredibly significant to the art form and it was not simply a Szarkowski-determining prophesy.

I began stalking Lee Friedlander a couple of years ago as an MFA in Photography student. I most comprehensively attempted to articulate my academic appreciation for Lee and his photographic work in this term paper for one of my favorite classes – a class in Documentary Photography: Lee Friedlander - Documentary Photographer?

I do appreciate academics and think that they can enhance our appreciation for all things appreciable (even those which at first glance may seem unappreciable). But I’m sort of wanting to be less academic and more passionate and inspired and want for the relationship between Lee and I to follow suit.

This has really been a hot summer in Dallas. And the point of that is that I’m taking a break from being on the road and returned to my home in Dallas for a couple of weeks to see a few friends, make sure my home is in one piece, take in some of Dallas’s hot temperate charms, etc. One of the benefits of being in my home, besides the A/C is that I have access to my photography books. Last evening, in an effort to take my relationship with Lee a step further, I went to bed with my copy of America by Car (Lee’s book). And in a fresh way was reminded about how “fun” photography can be. You were great Lee.

The photograph at the top of this entry is a case in point. The physical car breaks the picture plane into 4 segments: The car’s interior, the view through the windshield, the view through the driver’s window, and the reflection in the sideview mirror. Two points of fun in Friedlander’s composition here, well three: 1. The arc of the fish tangential to and opposing the arc created by the steering wheel. Breaking rules of “good photography” is sexy in my humble opinion. 2. This juxtaposition increases the plasticity in the picture plane because these 2 elements are simultaneously being seen in different and the same depths in the picture plane causing the eye to bounce, or refocus, on the different depths in the picture plane. And 3. The inclusion of the mirror’s reflection adds a whole warp to the dimensionality of the photograph throwing the viewer in the opposite direction of the rest of the scene. Or somewhere. I find in each of the photographs included in America by Car loaded with these types of fun visual treasures. Indeed in much of Friedlander’s work. Photography should be fun.

Road Tripping

Travel companion in profile. Somewhere between Dallas and Los Angeles. June 2, 2011.

“The early bird catches the worm,” has been an attendant theme throughout my life. I’m not necessarily driven, nor feel that I need to get my piece of the pie before anyone else, but I simply learned early that my brain works best in the morning. To be more specific, I am most productive from the time I get out of bed until around noon. After that all bets are off. This self-knowledge undergirded by the proper motivation – by grades, pay, promise of praise, or whatever – led me to make choices to leverage productivity with my own noodle. When possible I have adjusted schedules and appointments accordingly: I took college labs and classes that required concentration in the morning; I suggested that we finish the Scrabble game in the morning; I looked into - and hopefully solved - tough problems and wrote papers and responded to emails in the morning; I scheduled meetings and appointments that I could coast through for the afternoons and evenings, better yet during mealtimes, etc. And so it is as I get out of bed at 3:40 AM this morning. I have mental activity to do.

The Jeep is already packed. I feed my pup and traveling companion, Lola, then splash water on my face and brush my teeth. The Texas weather is already too warm for hot coffee and so I bought a giant (32 oz.) energy drink last evening to help jolt me into focus this morning. I’m on the road by 4:00 AM, heading from my home in Dallas toward Wichita Falls and then Amarillo on U.S. Route 287. I understand that I could take this particular road more or less from Port Arthur, Texas to Choteau, Montana save for a break through Yellowstone National Park. But today I’ll only take it as far as Amarillo where I’ll hit Interstate 40 westbound. I have a reservation at the La Quinta Inn in Gallup, New Mexico for the evening. Lola can stay there in the room with me. And so I’m faced with thirteen or fourteen hours of just the basic animal needs (of me and Lola) to care for, views of prairie and farmland and small towns and large towns, songs to Shazam on SiriusXMU, AND my thoughts. Tomorrow will be similar except for the scenery as I complete the drive through New Mexico, Arizona, and California on into Los Angeles.

I’ve always loved road trips. But since 2001 when I adopted a more creative life (i.e., I left the corporate world en lieu of creative pursuits), these road trips have become a touchstone of my life. Maybe it’s the isolation and not having anything to turn to for distraction. Or maybe it is the open-mindedness of being on an adventure and traveling great distances that jars something lose in my brain, or lets me go off unencumbered on tangents and to consider options and give them the time for refinement and contemplation. Without adequately putting my finger on it, these road trips have consistently and dependably provided the backdrop to framing, brainstorming and finding answers to some of the biggest questions and challenges that I’ve crossed in my creative life. Examples of road trip mental fruits have included: I came up with and fleshed out concepts for several big photography projects; I’ve pre-written and brain-stormed 100s of writing topics; I worked through many of the details of writing my Master Thesis; I’ve thought extensively about photographic presentation and where I think it is going in the future; I’ve thought a lot about street art and other mediums of art and how these fit into what I want to do as an artist; and on and on. In other words, the conceptual dimensions of my work have often been sorted as part of a road trip brainstorming session.This is without mentioning the myriad personal questions and challenges that get their own resolution through road trip mindshare.

For this trip from Texas to California, there are a number of conceptual topics that I traverse.(I am sure that these will find their place in this space as they precipitate out.) But on this trip, while contemplating concepts, I do something very non-conceptual. I keep my point and shoot camera at my side and whenever instinct, desire, or whimsy dictate, I take a photograph. Not fussy photographs. Just point and shoot: simple visual documentation of passing instances. Of course doing this rapidly starts to take on conceptual dimensions as I contemplate the camera as a mimetic recording tool and how the factors of optics, sensors or film, shutter speeds, apertures, sources and directions of light, perspective, choice of subject, timing, etc. all become simultaneously the factors that limit and slant the documentary point of view as well as give an entry point for those who choose photography as an artistic medium. Nonetheless, I continue to spontaneously shoot from the hip for the duration of the trip regardless of my mind/road trip meanderings. The result is for me a connection with the century and a half of human desire and ability to record – more or less – what we see. Primal photography.

Follow this link to a number of the shots that I took on this road trip.

In the Rain

Blue Breasts, Los Angeles, California, 2011. — *Blue Breasts*, Los Angeles, California, 2011.

I was recently photographing in Los Angeles. I had about 4 days of shooting under my belt. But I was intent on getting at least another day in – and hopefully a few more good shots - before I had to head back to Dallas. It had started raining on the last day that I would be able to get out . It was a Sunday. Thus far in my project, Urban Pieces, I have shot in direct sunlight if possible so that the light can work its magic in making colors stronger and brighter and also in creating shadows that I think can add interest and depth. That said, some of the hand-painted outdoor artworks that I include in my photographs never see direct sunlight (because they are in alleys or on the north sides of buildings, etc.), On this particular rainy day, I contemplated bagging on the shoot due to the lack of direct sunlight and calling it a trip. But it was Sunday morning and there weren’t many cars out on the road, or in parking lots, etc. And so I decided to stay in my rental car and shoot murals and graffiti masterpieces through the wet windshield.

While I had done this before for other projects – i.e., shoot from inside a car – I felt that it was sort of a break-through for this project. It presented another spin on how these artworks may be seen affected by the environment; in this case the weather. The water on the windshield creates distortions of the things being photographed. In the case of the blue and gray mural above - which depicts hands cupping breasts - the subject becomes a bit abstracted with the refraction in the water causing almost a melting effect. Also in this image is the reflection of the vent and a speaker in the car’s dash which adds some ambiguity and creates more abstraction but also adds texture to the image.

Besides the effects of the water on the resulting image, this “technique” of shooting through the car windshield highlighted a dimension of this work. These images were shot in places where there was little interaction with the rest of the social landscape. And while I see this as a documentary photography project, I also do not intend for it to be simply a catalogue of others’ artwork. In other words, I am trying to create new art pieces (my own) via the photograph that provides a new and interesting perspective on the social landscape. I intend to create expressive compositions, or pieces, which have as a common denominator the hand-added color introduced into the urban environment through murals and graffiti masterpieces.

Bombing Modernism

Dallas, Texas, 2011, Urban Pieces by R. A. Mitchell — Dallas, Texas, 2011, *Urban Pieces* by R. A. Mitchell

Invocation of “vandalism” has been at the crux of arguments against graffiti and serves as the foundation for arguments in favor of municipal anti-graffiti campaigns. My Urban Pieces project puts “graffiti masterpieces” (as opposed to rushed “tags” and “throwups”) on a pedestal along with hand-painted murals commissioned by someone (either privately or publicly) or otherwise sanctioned nonetheless. The same stands true of the graffiti that I capture in my documentary series. There are legal graffiti areas of many cities, and in other cities there are areas where the colorful masterpieces are accepted and welcome and building owners forbid municipal blasting crews from altering their private property. These are the graffiti masterpieces that I incorporate into my photographs.

My Urban Pieces project started as a rant against the homogeneity and banality of a modern architecture and urban design momentum that more often than not caricatured or completely neglected cultural and personal expressiveness and reference. Instead of answering questions about who we are and where we’ve come from or what makes the location and people of say, Dallas, unique from the location and people of say, Cleveland, modernity solved problems of producing efficient floor-space for living and commerce in a sleek aesthetic. And the look of modern design from one city to the next looks very similar. A sense of place gets lost. But I’m not easily given to ranting and after a photography trip to Chicago in 2009, my project took on more of the appreciation that the modern exists and moves forward under its own momentum and for good reasons (economies and aesthetics), but in the urban mix are traces of individual and cultural expressiveness. These I find for my project in hand-painted murals and graffiti masterpieces.

I recently came across this excellent essay by Amos Klausner for the design website CORE77, Bombing Modernism: Graffiti and its relationship to the (built) environment. In my view this article aptly describes the rise of graffiti in the second half of the 20th Century as a reaction to post-WWII modernism and specifically modernism’s impact on high-density urban architecture and planning. The article further posits that the baroque tendencies of wild-style graffiti writing not only served as a counterpoint to underscore the failings of modernism as it used rational thought and minimalist design principles as the agents to reach a new utopian social order. But also that graffiti may have been a catalyst - or at least an outward expression – of the ideals embodied in post-modernism and what appears to be the pinnacle of post-modernism in deconstructivism. Throughout the article, Amos Klausner, reminds us that words and language (mostly names) are the basis for graffiti. And while the progression of graffiti has often rendered the reading of it difficult if not impossible to many, it still maintained a power to convey a message and cultural reference for all viewers. Perhaps a devisive message.

Klausner ends his essay by showing how technologically-based manipulation and incorporation of words into design leads to a result that doesn’t resonate very deeply with cultural reference. And thus raises the possibility that graffiti has served it’s purposes in questioning modernism and helping shape post-modernism. However, a recent trip to San Francisco reminded me that beautiful writing is still alive and very well at the urban street level (as is the sample above taken in Dallas, Texas). I raise that not so much to counter the idea that graffiti has served its purpose as a shaper and conduit of art of the last 60 years.But maybe to raise the question of whether or not the domino-like reactions of post-modernism and deconstructivism have sufficiently responded to the inadequacies of modernism to make our urban environments more culturally expressive. Or as most movements tend to build upon what has come before, has post-modernism simply been a prettying up of modernism?

Intersection - Vernacular and Hand-Painted

In an earlier post, I introduced the concept behind my Urban Pieces project. Here again is a statement of this project:

" Urban Pieces results from my personal search in the urban environment for a sense of place – that feeling that a place is special and unique with authentic human attachment and belonging. Specifically, I have sought out and photographed where hand-painted murals and graffiti masterpieces visually intersect with elements of the vernacular urban landscape. I intend for each photograph to capture an instance where I found color and cultural expressiveness that creates for me a one of a kind experience of these places that would not happen if the pedestrian elements were there alone without these touches of the human hand."

I use the photograph above -- that I took in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, Texas, on January 2, 2011 – to illustrate the intersection “where hand-painted murals and graffiti masterpieces visually intersect with elements of the vernacular urban landscape.”

This particular forest landscape mural has been painted on a four-sided pillar that supports a freeway. It and a number of other beautiful hand-painted pieces have been added to the “Art Park” in Deep Ellum, all utilizing these freeway supports. For me personally, the mural works found in Deep Ellum are perhaps some of Dallas’s most redeeming cultural achievements. Again personally…many Dallasites may give it a nod, but I doubt that many feel it “redeems” the city culturally.

I qualify freeway supports like this in their unpainted state as vernacular in that they represent the common building style of a period or place. They have a textured finish, but they could be found anywhere in the U.S., if not throughout the world. So they are common. As is the drain pipe and electrical housing that are also found in this photograph. But with paintbrush in hand an artist has added a colorful landscape that has made this common freeway support transcend the vernacular. One can now recognize this particular pillar as unique and could describe it to another person as a meeting point, for example. And thus it helps create a unique sense of place.

Juggling, Theology, and Pure Mathematic

Green Slug, Hollywood, California, by R. A. Mitchell. — *Green Slug*, Hollywood, California, by R. A. Mitchell.

Day before Thanksgiving 2009. Driving north on Highway 5 toward L.A. The sun starting to come up behind me making long shadows of the cars stopping and going all around. I pass the downtown skyline. Back in the day - after grad school - I used to work in that tallest white one with the crown on it. Used to be called the First Interstate Tower. I think, but I’m not too troubled by my ailing memory this morning. I’m heading to Melrose – the south alley - to photograph some murals and graffiti in the “magic hour” of light. Listening to some various tunes – Psychedelic Furs, Bob Mould, Uncle Kracker. Some caffeine and a sunrise and I’m in my most universal frame of mind concerning relationships between music, color, art, food…well basically everything in the universe to wax redundant. In the midst of this blood buzz, I’m in a mood to listen to Run by Snow Patrol. I first heard this song when Snow Patrol warmed up the crowd for U2 in 2005 in Amsterdam during the Vertigo tour. I was taken then, as I am now, by it’s rich, sustained melodic vocals.

Then I remembered that a buddy had strongly suggested I download a cover of Run by Leona Lewis. I’m a little leery of stunningly beautiful diva covers of treasured rock and roll songs, but I let my universal ponderings this morning take me down into that rabbit hole. It started off slow with wistful vocals and piano. But then built in vocal strength and orchestral pieces in the chorus and second stanza: “…light up, light up, as if you have a choice…”. And then again in the third stanza so that between minutes 2 and 3 of Leona’s cover, I’m thinking something probably more vague but along the lines of “…wow, can an artistic performance have any more emotional depth…” But at about minute 3:15, there is a response. A gospel reprise embodying pure soul and abandonment to something else – music, color, spirit, love, passion, touch, a fifth dimension perhaps.

Keeping that in mind and segueing to photography, Lee Friedlander is one of my photography heroes (and I’m sure that I will talk about his work much in this space). He stretched the boundaries of documentary photography with what I would describe as artistic expressiveness. And this artistic expressiveness is akin to what I heard in Leona Lewis’s voice, and in Gary Lightbody’s voice, or that I see in the colorful marks made by these mural and graffiti artists’ hands, or that I see when I watch a soccer player moving the ball downfield, or that I feel when I’m making love or connecting with a friend, or that something I remember tasting in my mother’s turkey stuffing and pumpkin pie when she was alive. I could go on endlessly, there is something, maybe it is a type of perfect good or spirit, that is common to all of these things. These gifts.

Another approach at this, and as it relates to Friedlander: I came across this anonymous quote describing his genre-bending ventures in photography: “Photography has generally been defended on the ground that it is useful, in the sense that the McCormick reaper and quinine have been useful…It should be added however that some of the very best photography is useful only as juggling, theology, or pure mathematics is useful – that is to say, useless, except as nourishment for the human soul”. Today I am thankful for the things that nourish the human soul.

(Note: This essay was first written in 2009. I have updated it here in 2010 for this blog posting.)