The junkyards, Willets point, Queens, 2019, in 2013 the city sold 23 acres of land in the iron triangle section of Queens, to build a retail more complex, and the age of Amazon. There were 23 acres of shops, salvage yards, and the ironworks with numerous workers. I shot this section for seven years, until only a brownfield was left.
MAKE ART GREAT AGAIN
Who, amongst artists, goes to a source outside themselves? Lives and works there? The lifeless camera is built for it, and, so is RealStill, ready to capture, at a minimum, the physical truth of the thing. Now, with disinformation, a walking schizophrenia, if I show a picture of a bird, guaranteed, there will be some who will say it is not a bird, or, it is a fake bird. If we can no longer agree on the most basic modes of language and communication, and methods of proof, then how can we ever expect to…?
Speaking of outlandish, or, ephmeral birds, has the American art professional become to conceptual, academic, institutional, too wrapped up in identity politics as ends, not means, to unity? (And, now, I’m sure, I just got more quietly blacklisted, i mean, cancelled, which is fine since i self-cancelled in 1989) By the 1990s the attention was flipped, as the lens was turned more to the operator. Identity politics and conceptual work blew up, such as the one, that has pre-ordained all photography as fiction, with no special relationship to reality or truth. Promoted by commercial galleries, some photographers gain monumental valuations, and, in photography, they became known as, the pictures generation, a unit of art, in which, I have no qualifications because reality, the world, and, its people and things come first. In other words, any sort of careering, has always taken a backseat to a priority called reality and the world, and, by the way, fantasy and bull shit isn’t built into the camera or modern media. Just like the act of searching for, and, recording truth with a camera, the medium is under the direction of an operator who is calling the kinds of shots. In RealStill’s case, it’s directed away from the self, and, into the world, where the self is there to participate, often fully, in the work. This pictures generation that I am so out of step with, although of equal age, seems obsessed with self and appropriation. The picture of the author, remember, is meant to be a satirical take of the performance art-as-politics phenomonon.
French Marxist academic theories evolved from defending the working class, to ignoring them, in favor of gender, race, identity politics and even religion. Concepts, in America, can become a tool for its unintended antipode. Hijacking notions of documentation, hegemony of the media, now, the right, using conceptual media tools, that were once the domain of Marxist academics, has come up with fake news, and, their own trending buzzwords such as “Alt-right” patriots calling out “lame-stream” media by using the power of disruption, misinformation and reinvention, flipping liberal touchstones and strategies, into their own. Their wisest and most self-revealing buzzwords, like the beauty, “alternative facts” lays it bare.
The camera is equally capable of lies, fact, fantasy, truth, in all degrees and variations. It can be a deceiver without peer, unless its operator decides otherwise. RealStill operates through compressed layers of expressive fact, and raw document, and can go anywhere from there, that would be into actual people, places and things, outside the self, where you can even find new forms of capture if you have to, according to your subject.
Empathy or unity is recognition of the universal from living in the same world. More individuation is recognition of the self, manipulating things. Genuine culture has something at stake, by direct connection, forming actual artifacts, unconcerned by the nature of representation, and the authors relationship to every little thing.
William Turner said famously, “I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don’t succeed because they don’t learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing. I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.”
Can a website, itself, the art? I have no idea, but this site is open, free and, with regards to photographers and websites, there really is nothing like it. It certainly isn’t an artist portfolio site, now is it? There’s no commerce, and, not to spread my name, on a site with no name is mentioned. Telling the truth directly, with or without humor, is not exactly the road to success, but this is not about success is it? If, after experiencing my sarcasm, you say, “I’m crazy.” I, then, say you have no experience.
Selfless pursuit of, for lack of a better word, expression, such as, the painter, Turner, strapping himself to a mast in a violent storm to better understand his subject, or, the irony of “the world’s greatest artist” who sold no work while alive, or, Michelangelo, who was, of all folks, all about the work.
And, it is their names, that I’m proud to also offer an NFT version of the Make Art Great Again card, for the bargain price of 4.3 million dollars each. All folks who buy the NFT card will be eligible to spend an evening with your favorite artist, me, in a life and death struggle to capture America, its infrastructure, cities and people, before its disappearance, and my own. Think i’m kiddin? The time is now.
These days, who, amongst artists, goes to the source? Not the representation, or, an indiscriminate appropriation of a representation, or constructing a representation of reality, to “prove” that photography has no special relation to it, or, that, to over-simply, all is self-construction.
Veracious culture stems from entwinement with irrefutable things and people, where, there is something at stake, and, unconcerned by the nature of representation, or my relation to it, you can do greta things. In the source is found novel reality, but not unique selfhood. You’re in the mix, and, certainly not on your authentic journey.
No goal, but to get the shot, on a selfless pursuit, too documentary for art, too art for documentary. Should have been the sweet spot, not a sour one.
Soul and truth connect through different channels, tied by virtue of experience. Here, ideas and appraisals are relative, taming overvaluations that skewer the reality of things.
More individuation is recognition of the self, manipulating things. Genuine culture has something at stake, a direct connection, that forms actual artifacts unconcerned by the nature of representation and the author’s relationship to representation, or every little thing.
To make art great again, make the senses part of art, again. Take action, in an open range of things, where references or ironies evaporate, in the face of simply what is, to make artifacts of time, by not just going to the source, but placing it before all other considerations.
The sun, the source of life, and natural light, is exactly, what this camera seeks, at least, at my direction, but, adding moonlight as well. Draining the swamp – for pictures of the lost source – it’s too real reality. Go to the source, go to – RealStill.com.