Contemplation
by markwiley

Comment:
It's classically beautiful Mark. Thank you.

Reggio23: One
by rooum

Comment:
A conjugality between Edward Hopper and Trent Parke. So it's a good thing you're a wedding photographer,
Beautiful, rich, pictures. A visual espresso where the colour is so deep it has a taste, and the froth of it attaches to the walls of the cup, leaving you astonished that so much intensity can be concentrated into one brief experience.
Superior stuff, Clive.

on the road again
by posthumous

Comment:
I'd have given two 10s, and they'd both have landed in your house. Such a beautiful thing, an inorganic life form. Road yearning for animation. Thank you.

concatenation
by skewsme

Comment:
I'd have given two 10s, and they'd both have landed in your house. This is wonderful; photo as installation, near-enough. A folding delight. Thank you.

about goodbyes
by jmritz

Comment:
About goodbyes; that�s a good title. Apt. I embrace it, especially as my membership expires in a few days.

Well, it�s the usual last page placement for you, with this stellar 21/27 finish.

Wait a minute � 27 entries? That�s pretty telling. All this time, all these cameras, all these impotent megapixels scattered like spilled spermatazoa, all these blathering forums, all these arguments about Canon versus Nikon; and still there�s just 27 entries, of which 25 are most mercifully forgotten as far as I�m concerned.

What is a camera if it is not an instrument for divining the soul? Sounding the depths of the human condition?

Using a camera as a mere recording device is such a dismal thing. I�m convinced that almost all of the people who own cameras are the worst possible people to possess them. It�s like guns; the only people who should be allowed to own a gun are the people who don�t want to. Or politicians: the only people who should be allowed near public office are those who abhor the idea and would refuse it.

So, 27 entries. It makes sense. When DPC was young, digital photography was young. Almost everything was new. But now, digital photography has become democratized such that it�s no more difficult, and no more notable, than drawing breath. Any mutt can do it, and so they do. Over and over and over again. Bow wow wow.

So how difficult, how admirable, how heroic, is it to consistently (more than 1000 times!) stab holes in the very horizons of what�s comprehensible, what's acceptable, in an age when the popular desire is to reduce everything to a simplistic, mindless meme instantly understood by everyone in the world? Je suis Charlie, and so forth. Answer: it�s very difficult indeed, and the price you pay is to be on the last page every time. If there were a page after the last page, you�d be on that.

But what if you can do this 1000+ times, always knowing in advance what will happen, ever knowing the weight of willful, even eager, mediocrity that will blanket and smother you, and you still do it anyway?

I can�t tell you how much I admire you for that.

This photograph is in the Purple Heart tradition. You keep bleeding for people who in the most part have no fucking clue what they owe you for your blood.

But let�s put aside all that noble-but-misunderstood artist stuff, before you start hacking off your ears. Let�s consider the thing democratically; with just say 10% of our brainpower. The challenge is to, �Take a picture where a car/automobile is the main subject in your picture�. So the lumpen, leaden interpretation of that is to show a picture of a car that is unequivocal and documentary. This is a car. This is a sexy car. This is a bright, shiny, sexy car. Or an old car. A grungy, rusty old car. But almost no one shows us what a car is; what a car means. The figurative essence of a car from a humanistic viewpoint.

But you do. Thank you.

jmritz
by jmritz

Comment:
Wings, John.

first realities
by daisydavid

Comment:
Absorbing. And long-lasting. Like one of those Choo-Choo bars of our youth; they satisfied from start to finish, and they never did seem to finish. This essay will reward consideration for as long as the viewer cares to look, and in my case that's a long, long, Choo-Choo bar time.

A particularly thrilling idea for me, that you have graced each of analog & digital with equal billing. You let me see them in this essay as the Vladimir and Estragon of photography. I might never be able to consider them separately again now.

The pictures are beautiful, complex and (sorry about this) ambiguous. I loved trying to more clearly tease out one of each pair with each of my eyes, and that nearly worked but they always swam back into concurrence before I could make any notes. So I'm none the wiser and all the better informed for that.

The chook? The chook is a little bottler, mate. Go the Chooks! Thank you.

i
by jmritz

Comment:
You must be tiring of my praise and admiration? Well tough luck for you matey, because if you are tiring of my adulation and respect your future looks bleak.

I have just looked through your essay again with good friend Antony Osler, a Buddhist monk/Zen teacher/sheep farmer/magistrate, author of two wonderful books that make me feel exactly the way your photographs and essays make me feel. Antony loves the pictures in this essay John, and the words, and he shares with me in this appreciation and thank you.

1
by 2mccs

Comment:
You are so very good at expressing complexity simply.

I have more to say but I have just been interrupted by the plumber; he is good at expressing simple things incomprehensibly but expensively. Back to you later.

OK, I'm back but lighter by quite a few dollars. Now, where was I ...?

Yes, you're good at distillation. Better than good; way better. The pictures are beautifully judged, and each is perfectly characterised by the title narrative. And the result is a lovely parable, small and large at once, and as powerfully underplayed as Saint-Ex's Little Prince. I could float in your stuff for hours at a time. Thank you.

Message edited by author 2015-07-01 03:50:34.

Tracing Yesterday's Footsteps
by insteps

Comment:
Everything is there. Beautiful, interesting photographs, and a story told with respect and sensitivity. The triptych to start and the tetraptych to finish is beautifully done and connects the mortal with the spiritual.

This essay would be perfect for presentation/preservation as a hand-made book. But a smallish book; it's a jewel concentrated & precious, not a billboard (nothing to be shouted here, it's a whisper, or better yet a murmur).

Thank you, for keeping the essays alive, and for leading by example.