Rick Visser, Self-Portrait, Oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 2008 

Begun on December 27, 2007.

It has been a long time since my last entry.  Since the last post I have been in three exhibitions and won an award in one.  Last night 'The Edgy' Photography exhibiton opened at the Center For Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins.  I was pleased to be one of the 53 artists selected from over 800 entries.

It is a worthy show. Here is an image of my entry:

Rick Visser, Rescue, 2008 

Inspired by medieval altarpieces, my photographic triptychs are expressions of a long-term interest in the poetic reverberation of multiple images and motifs.

In medieval altarpiece triptychs, the central panel was always the most important, and was flanked on either side by two lesser but related panels. These altarpieces were sometimes designed to fold closed, the two hinged outer panels closing across the central panel. My works are direct descendents of that 600 year old tradition.

Yet, they are not mere variations on an art-historical theme; rather, they carry with them a robust and inventive direction for photography today…not by means of craftier image-manipulation (the current rage and common coin of the realm), but by an evocative juxtaposition of images that speak to the depths of our being, asking questions that have been asked since time out of mind, and that have been given expression in the highest achievements of art and myth.

All aspects of the framing—the dark wood moldings, brass hinging, minimal matting, and cantilevered wing panels—are vital components of the overall concept. 

 Hans Memling, Last Judgment.

In previous entries on this topic I outlined some of the ways the word 'triptych' is now used.  One test for a true triptych might be to imagine one of the side panels removed.  If it still works as a diptych, one might argue that it is not a true triptych in the ab-original sense of the term.

If I frame three versions of a flower in the same frame, I could very easily remove one and call it a diptych.  Whereas, if I removed the left panel of Memling's 'Last Judgement,' the world, as Memling understood it or tried to portray it, would be a different place: an entire cosmology would be ruined...or transformed...or deformed.

Picasso: "Of all - hunger, extreme poverty, the incomprehension of the public - fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true." (Quoted by Patrick O'Brian in his biography of Picasso - ISBN 0007173571)

My new web site is now fully functional. You can logon HERE.  At this early stage, it features only my latest work in photography, a little poetry, and my new partnership with Tony Umile, a very talented black and white photographer who works only on film.  Check it out!

 Gaston Bachelard

First, a fragment of a dream: I am driving a car; it is winter; the snow is deep. I am in a wide open space but approaching a narrow road that skirts a hill. The heavy snowfall has left only one passable lane. A car is coming toward me on that one lane. I see it straight out in front of me. I realize that, before I can enter this one lane, I must wait for it to get to the wide open space that I am in. As I wait for this car to go past, I wonder what will happen if I meet another car on this one lane road.

In the next instant, I am off to the side of the open space, on the right, and the other car is now speeding very fast toward the open space, from right to left across my field of vision, going through deep drifts, snow flying everywhere, visibility zero.  Another car is behind the first, they are both driving at high speed, nearly invisible.

I wonder at their reckless speed, at their inability to see anything, at the immense risk they are taking; at the fact that there may very well be a car right in their path.

I wake up. I marvel at this scene: how a dream can shift perspective so quickly, how the dreaming mind can conjure up such a fluid and beautiful scene.

I realize that this is what my triptychs attempt to do: create an association of images that connect and relate shifting perspectives, in time…three images that jump from one perspective to another, without interference, without rational support or doubt...and without concept.

The triptychs are very much oneiric images, dream images, they exist only in the realm of reverie. It is the work of a somnobulist...and I want them to express this quality to the utmost.  To be precise, dream images do not overlap; though they make abrupt transitions and changes of perspective.

“In order to know the success of images, it is better to follow the somnambulistic reverie, to listen…to the dreamer’s somniloquy.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Reverie, p. 53

Image:'Photo-Transformation', Polaroid SX-70 print by Lucas Samaras, 1973, Getty Museum 

When I said 'solution' in my previous journal entry, I used too strong a word, or, at least, one that is too easily misconstued...perhaps I should have said 'resplendent'...something beyond the enclosed self...opening toward...I'm not sure.

Isn't this the real - the deeper - reason people dislike photos of themselves...because they feel enclosed by them, and now being on paper, they feel locked into something they feel too locked into already, it reminds them of their locked-in-ness...inescapbly so...now it is there in front of them, on paper...fixed. 

"One is not nauseous about certain traits or characteristics, e.g. a misshapen nose, legs too long, a moral fault, but rather about one’s very being: in nausea one is sick about and of oneself." Richard Cohen - (see reference below)

Most of us just hope for a photo that is kind to our enclosed self, that puts the enclosed self in its best light...that gives the illusion of command, of ourselves and of our world, or, at least, that indicates a satisfaction or acceptance of oneself...even though we know we are not satisfied...will never be...and that such satisfaction might even be a false ideal...that it is not satisfaction we most want...but something beyond satisfaction...transendence, perhaps.

See Richard Cohen's ESSAY...

"In Plato’s day, the word mimesis referred to an actor’s performance of his role, an audience’s identification with a performance, a pupil’s recitation of his lesson, and an apprentice’s emulation of his master. Plato, who was literate, worried about the kind of trance or emotional enthrallment that came over people in all these situations, and Havelock inferred from this that the idea of distinguishing the knower from the known was then still a novelty." from Twilight of the Books, Caleb Crain, New Yorker, December 24, 2007

To expose the ecstatic response of the person behind the camera...

the image: equal portions of subject and object, equal portions of stimulus and response.

The photographer imbedded in every pixel of his or her subject...dissolved in every pixel...every pixel a solution of subject and object...an ecstatic solution, an ecstatic image...neither fish nor foul, neither here nor there...out of place.

One could then relax in being...

Perhaps photographs are demeaning...

Lacking in ecstasy!

paper dolls...

 Paul Eluard

What Picasso’s friend, Paul Eluard, said of painters is applicable to photographers as well: “Painters have been victims of their means. Most of them are woefully limited to reproducing the world. When they made their portraits, it was by looking at themselves in the mirror, without reflecting that they themselves were a mirror….”

 
Douglas Elementary School, Douglas, Michigan

How Mali Finn's obiturary happened to appear in our small-town newspaper is a bit of a mystery to me, but it did, and I was surprised...and saddened.

Many years ago, Mali Finn and I worked together at a small elementary school in Michigan.  Our little school must have been one of the only elementary schools in the country with a full-time theater instructor.  It was a unique program and she was a unique person.  We had a real respect and appreciation for each other, and shared many hours discussing education, art, and life.

One day, she held her hand over the phone, looked at me, and asked if I was interested in meeting a man who was traveling around the country recruiting for positions at a research school in New York.  I said I was.

She arranged a meeting at her beach house in Holland, Michigan...and a year later I was in NY.  The faculty of the NY research school eventually brought her there for a workshop on teaching theater to children.  We had drinks together before she left...and I never saw her again.

Mali was a very beautiful person, with immense energy, warmth, and magnetism.  I am much indebted to her.  Clearly, there must be a great number of people indebted to her in a similar way.  May the world be filled with people like her!

Information at IMDb

And this obituary from Variety

Los Angeles Times / December 9, 2007

A former English and drama teacher, Mrs. Finn launched her Hollywood casting career after she and her husband, Donn, a theater professor, moved from Holland, Mich., to Newport Beach in 1981.  More >>

Joseph Conrad Listening to Music. Etching by Muirhead Bone

Conrad: "To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good.  It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of it being made so." 

"His fundamental position is revealed in a letter to his friend, the socialist Robert Cunninghame Graham: "Life knows us not and we do not know life - we don't even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow."

Conrad: "The only legitimate basis of creative work lies in the courageous recognition of all the irreconcilable antagonisms that make our life so enigmatic, so burdensome, so fascinating, so dangerous - so full of hope."

Read more >>