The Map

Photo book lovers in San Francisco are in luck. Wayne Bremser has created a custom Google Map of city locations selling new and used photo books. I think it would be great if every major city had one of these. Agree? Create a local photo book map, send it to me, and I'll post here.

Also on the subject of maps, Jen Bekman's 20 x 200 today released a new watercolor map of Portland by Stamen Designs. Unlike Wayne's map above it's not very good as a practical tool. But it sure is purty to look at. And it does work in a roundabout way. Place a finger anywhere on it at random. You'll probably be near a used bookstore, at least a coffee house showing photos.

Not like wrestling or football

"I can’t get the high any other way. I like aggression but I don’t like aggression put on me by someone else. I like pulling hard on a hold and using my muscles. Doing something that is scary but I don’t have to worry about anyone else injuring me. It’s not like wrestling or football." --Clayton Cotterell

Read more about Clayton in the latest installment of Eye On PDX now up at Prison Photography.

I appreciate Pete shouldering the Eye-On-PDX load in recent weeks while I tackle some other things. Nothing that important. Just, you know, I dunno, things. But I promise to be a good boy and post another of my own profiles soon. Stay tuned...  

DIY Distribution

DIY distribution is a great way to get your photos out in the world. Unlike traditional exhibition methods like galleries or online portfolios, the key to DIY is to embrace the surprise element. I like to distribute photos with absolutely no information. No name, no website, no statement, just the photo. The goal is not to get your name out there. It's to make people ask WTF? Why is that photo there? DIY distribution is not like handing out business cards. You're spreading fucking art, dude. Or maybe littering, depending on who's keeping track. So just keep that in mind.

As a general rule deliberate placements receive more attention than "accidental" ones. A photo which is lying on a park bench may have been placed deliberately or it may have just blown there. Without careful placement no one can tell, and very few people except other artists will examine something which just blew there. But a placement which shows conscious intent usually gathers attention. So if you want to reach a wide audience you must make your placements appear deliberate. All DIY placements below follow that rule.

A multitude of Library DIY possibilities

1. Library Books. My preferred method. I check out a handful of photography monographs each month from my local libraries. Before I return any book I always insert a workprint randomly in the pages. The prints are held flat and protected from light. For books with low circulation sometimes they aren't seen for years. But when the time comes, surprise!

2. Telephone poles or kiosks. Treat these like rock posters. The most efficient system is to take a stack of hundreds of prints, a swing stapler with plenty of ammo, and just carpet the street pole by pole. One photo per pole should be sufficient. When distributing many photos in close proximity it's important to avoid reprints. Every photo needs to be original. And no photo should have any info. Just thinking about some stranger encountering those poles makes me chuckle. WTF?

3. Chain link. Most chain link fences have links which are perfectly spaced to receive and hold a 5 x 7 print by the corners, or two photos back to back. I love the way a fence holds a photo against the sky in a sort of semi-transparent framing. In fact I'm surprised more galleries don't use chain link framing. Chain link is probably closer to litter than other methods. The prints will likely blow away into the street soon and lose their deliberate feeling. So I like to ration these carefully, maybe one or two per block. For back alleys you can probably double that amount.

Chain Link, Lee Friedlander, 1963

4. Gallery desks. Most galleries have a public desk for local exhibition announcements and photo related flyers. These are great places for DIY distribution since they're generally out of the wind and rain. A small stack of photos can last several months with little deterioration. As a bonus the gallery crowd is a bit unique in that many of them actually give a shit about photography. So your target audience has a higher degree of specificity.

5. Phone booths and newspaper boxes. Both of these structures are on the wane. In another decade or so they may disappear entirely. One way to celebrate their swan song is DIY distribution. Most booths and boxes are relatively weather proof, although elements will eventually penetrate and degrade the photos. I like to prop my prints out of the muck using tape. Staples usually won't work here.

Car wipers awaiting DIY placement

6. Car windshields. This is a very short-term method. The photos will only remain until the driver returns. But that's fine since windshields are in full weather and photos won't last long anyway. It's imperative to place the photo carefully under the wiper to show intent. Otherwise it might appear accidental and be dismissed as simple garbage.

7. Hand outs. Standing on a street corner handing out photos has its ups and downs. As a method of displaying intent, this is the most effective tool available. Your photos will definitely not appear accidentally blown by the wind, although what your exact purpose is may still be ambiguous. The downside is that you lose the WTF? element. People can attach a name to the photos and thus dismiss the whole effort as a publicity stunt. To obviate this potential I like to scream loudly while I'm handing out my photos "THIS IS NOT A PUBLICITY STUNT!" That usually helps me regain the surprise element.

Let your photos rain down like confetti
Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle / ONLINE_YES

8. Bridge toss. I'd save the bridge toss as a last resort. If you're having trouble with the above methods a good one-shot distribution method is to find an freeway overpass with exposure to cars below. Rush hour is the best time when traffic is slow. Not only do drivers have a chance to look around, they will be bored and hungry for a diversion. Let the stack of photos rain down like confetti. Some will land on cars, most in the street. Maybe one in a thousand will actually find its mark and penetrate an open window. But all it takes is one. That photo which got inside someone's car is special. Odds are good that it'll get looked at, especially if it pokes the driver in the cheek or something. Congratulations and welcome to the bigtime! You've finally found someone who cares about your work!

The Pivot

One of the more interesting talks at this year's Northwest SPE conference was by Erik Palmer. Palmer's basic philosophy is that photographers should spend more time interfacing with social media, and less time worrying about actual photography. Things like camera operation, technique, and printing should be pushed to the back burner, or even relegated to hired staff. Instead photographers should prioritize online networking with Twitter, Facebook, etc. Palmer paused several times for naked appeals to tweet his lecture (which bore immediate fruit), and to follow him on Twitter and Tumblr .

erikpalmerphoto.tumblr.com

Palmer calls this shift in priorities The Pivot, and it forms the backbone of the photo curriculum he's developing at Southern Oregon University. Students coming out of that program may not know what an f-stop is, but they will know how to structure a visually pleasing Tumblr, how to tweet in appropriate amounts without being spammy, and how to generate likes and followers across a variety of platforms.

As one might expect Palmer's talk generated a heated discussion afterword (which spilled over into my scheduled belly button lecture, but that's another topic). There were the Luddites who rejected computers as evil, the branding experts saying the internet will lead to salvation, and many opinions between. The audience consisted mostly of photo teachers. So not only were they articulate, they were on the front lines. All in all it was a great exchange.

My feeling is that Palmer is basically right. If you want to develop a career as a photographer, the actual making of photographs is relatively unimportant. Everyone makes photos now. What sets some above others is networking. So if the goal of a photography program is to convert fledgling students into successful photographers --and that's a big if-- The Pivot makes sense. Social networking tools are the most essential skills one can learn.

But let's go back to that big if. Should career development be the goal of a photo curriculum? I'm not so sure. I tend to think photo programs should concentrate on image making. Students should learn how to see, how to be curious, how to put a picture together (assuming those things can be taught). Perhaps most importantly I think schools should develop students into interesting people with rich inner lives. Because those are the people who will make strong photographs, not the folks spending all day on Twitter.

Maybe all of that that sounds pretty fluffy and Liberal Arts oriented. And maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe photo programs should be essentially technical. It's an open question, and I'm willing to consider other views. I don't teach photography and I've only taken one photo course in my life. So I don't have the boots-on-the-ground understanding of Palmer or other professors. I just know how I interact with social media, and it's not entirely healthy.

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with blogging. Readers of B may have noticed a general increase in posting over the past several weeks, and a general decrease in the length of each post over the same period. Those trends are not unrelated. The more I post here, the more I feel obligated to post, and the less I tend to develop thoughts into longer essays. My posts tend to become short bursts, things I just thought of sharing that day but which won't necessarily stand up over time.

Maybe short thoughts are good in some ways. They're immediate and zenlike. But an entire culture of zen minds will not create much of lasting impact. When I felt my thinking compressed by B earlier this year, I had to quit blogging for a while. And I may have to do that again.

I know I could hold off and develop longer essays, then post them occasionally. That's what I'd like to do. But it's not what happens. I think there's something in the nature of blogging and all social media which favors the fleeting and the ephemeral. It values NOW. And it sucks you into that world. I don't tweet but I can imagine that Twitter is an even greater jump into that mindset, into The Pivot.

I think The Pivot is probably here to stay but it makes me nervous. With a new generation focusing on social media, where does that leave the making of photographs?

Tress test

Somehow I thought Arthur Tress in person would be, well, weirder. I don't know what I was expecting exactly. Maybe his face would be in permanent shadow? Or he'd dress in black? Or have wild piercings or tattoos or something? I know it's silly but I was basing my expectations on his photos. Images like this.

Superman Fantasy, 1977, Arthur Tress

You'd have to be a bit twisted to come up with stuff like that, right? But the Arthur Tress who lectured at SPE last night in Eugene seemed completely normal. Bespectacled, well mannered, wry, jovial even. You'd barely notice him sitting next to you on a city park bench. It was a bit jarring to have this friendly uncle figure up at the podium show us one disturbing image after another. Where did those ideas come from? Where was this guy hiding his dark side?

Stephen Brecht, Bride and Groom, New York, 1970, Arthur Tress

He told a story of writing a journal entry about twins. The next day walking on the beach with a camera he encountered a pair of twin sisters and made their portrait. Did he find them by chance? Or was there some door in his mind which had already been unlocked?

"Photographs are a projection of your mind onto the world, not vice versa," he said. In other words every photograph is on some level a self portrait. In staged or conceptual work the relationship is more obvious. But even straight documentary photography is essentially about the photographer, not the subject. That's the Tress philosophy and I think he's basically right.

Some of Tress's outlook is rooted in circumstance. Take a gay Jew raised during WWII and send him globetrotting for 5 years in his early 20s during a time of mass societal upheaval. That person's photos might naturally display a healthy imagination and the strong tint of exile. In the case of someone like Tress it might manifest as a dark fantasy world. I think there's a bit of that world in all of us. In order to be a photographer, to objectify, one must be an outsider on some level. But most are unable to channel and express this alienation as clearly as Tress has. 

Untitled, from San Francisco, 1964, Arthur Tress

Most will be familiar with the magic realism photography which has become Tress's hallmark. But he's equally talented as a documentary shooter. San Francisco 1964 shows a fantastic street eye, and one which foreshadows the absurdity of his later work. In recent decades Tress has shifted back into that straight documentary style, and he's been pumping out Blurb books in rapid fashion. If you haven't revisited his photos for a while it might be time to take a fresh look. He might just surprise you.