Reclining Nude
by PenelopeK

Comment:

one thumb = top ten & hang on my wall anytime.
The photograph actually feels like a sculpture; more than it does a photograph. Beautiful tones and shapes, parts and whole in a lovely harmony. Thank you.

my feet don't touch the ground
by jmritz

Comment:

one thumb = top ten & hang on my wall anytime.
Unexpectedly lovely and interesting. It feels very dynamic and loose. Something about that transcends photography, as if you've captured time and space rather than just some light. Thank you.

We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.
by posthumous

Comment:
Hard to resist reading it, after that opening line, is it not? I'm going to read it, for the line and because your photograph is beautifully brutal. A sort of uncaring caress. No idea what to book is about yet, but my first thought from the line and the image was of the Spanish Civil War. Somewhere high up in the north, among the Basques. So thank you.

upyours
by bvy

Comment:
Ai Weiwei. Thank you.

Liberté d'Expression
by gyaban

Comment:

Originally posted by marnet: I am amazed how many comments here are about the photography and how few about the issue. ...

I think it's because the issue is difficult and not well understood. Most of the Je Suis Charlie poseurs, both universally and at DPC, are inconsistent at best and hypocritical more likely. They say, "I believe in freedom of speech but that doesn't give the right to be offensive", which actually means, "I do not believe in freedom of speech".

In your own case, just to pick a random example, you declare yourself in the first comment on this photo to be Charlie, and declare that solidarity with Charlie Hebdo is very Important to you. You declare your refusal to live in fear. And you conclude by wrapping yourself in the French flag.

But your record contrasts sharply with these declarations. You have several times in the past said, quite unequivocally, that you do not want any comments on your work that are not favourable. You have in the past had a perfectly legitimate negative comment on the artistic merits of a photograph removed by SC simply because you didn't like it, and then you gleefully celebrated your censorship in a subsequent forum post.

Christophe, in his original challenge proposal, pointed out that DPC is a community of artists, and that freedom of expression is especially important to artists. But he didn't mean merely saying it's important via a slogan. He meant actually living and working by it. As did Charlie Hebdo. Vous n'êtes pas Charlie.

Message edited by author 2015-01-26 23:36:51.

like back in the summer of '69
by Neat

Comment:
Very nice indeed. Great implied stop motion effect with the divers. Thank you.

Chase
by MargaretNet

Comment:
I love this photograph. It's filled with life and charm and movement and contrasts. It's a delight in every way. Thank you.

For aince it’s toomed my hert and brain, the thistle needs maun fa’ again.
by posthumous

Comment:
It swooped around me. Just when I felt I was looking in the right direction, you disappeared, and then came up behind me, passed me by with a sort of chuckle. Or maybe I disappeared, and found myself approaching you, or where you'd been moments before, afresh.

I never quite felt oriented. But there were lines of force crackling all around, though not very loud. Just loud enough.

Henry's right, about the pact between the pictures and the words. I felt like you were teasing, in places, but you often have that will o' the wisp quality.

I did not follow everything. But I don't think I was meant to follow. I don't think that's what you wanted. It was more like a hall of mirrors (slightly ugly characterisation, sorry), with a different Don in every mirror.

Your reaction to your own pictures is very like your reaction to PH Award pictures, brevity and pith. A sort of distillation.

There were some beautiful allusions though; stand alone sparklers. The energy of the mystery ... Lost but comfortable, et al. Parts even greater than their sum, perhaps.

And, "This is what it looks like from my brain, someone is running toward me like he is trying to become me."

But the most beautiful of all was, "the calamity hardly seen, a volcano that fits in your hands has ruptured, has surrendered what's inside of it,"

An essay wrapped in the spirit of its subject. A philosophical onomatopoeia.
Thank you.

ETA I forgot to say, the pictures are more lovely for the words. No surprise there, but I mention it for the wretched souls who insist that a picture needs no words, nor even title.

Message edited by author 2015-01-04 02:02:19.

Photo Essay
by ubique

Comment:

Originally posted by marnet: ... Are Monet's Water Lilies mediocre? Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" mediocre? Rembrandt's self portraits (when he was young) mediocre? Da Vinci's "The Virgin of the Rocks" mediocre?

Yes. But first you must be quite sure you know what 'mediocre' actually means.

Originally posted by marnet: I am speechless.

Of course you are Margaret. That's the whole point of art; to overwhelm your faculties and render you mute. Glad to have been of some small service, to you and to the wider community.

Photo Essay
by ubique

Comment:

Originally posted by marnet: Paul, it is an essay about a photographic ideology rather than a photo essay ...

Yes it is. An essay about photographs, rather than an essay made out of photographs.

You summarise my point about snapshots very well; that the snapshot is actually quite unique and can’t be parodied or copied, other than in the most superficial (and pointless) way. And that therefore the snapshot is the real heart & soul of photography, and remains for nearly everybody the most essential and meaningful kind of photography. A snapshot will, in one sense, never die, even though its audience may be, as you rightly say, very limited. But an ‘art’ photograph begins dying immediately, and in a photographic generation or two the things that once may have made it remarkable have become clichéd and degraded by parody.

You’re also quite right about the legitimacy of artworks celebrating positive, uplifting feelings and emotions, and inspiring pleasant contemplative diversion. But that is, by virtue of its intentionally limited ambition, mediocre art. Don’t self-ignite over that: ‘mediocre’ doesn’t mean bad â€Â¦ it specifically means ‘neither good nor bad’ in the sense of being inoffensive and unobjectionable. Middle of the road. Most art critics and commentators (and most artists) won’t give that stuff much credit, because they hold art to a higher – or al least more ambitious – standard regarding its purpose and possibilities.

That̢۪s not really the elitist view that it appears to be. It̢۪s just a question of distribution curves. The middle of the curve is by definition mediocre; that̢۪s what the word means. So if an individual̢۪s expectation of art is that it specifically sets itself in opposition to the mediocre, it̢۪s only to be expected that that observer will eschew the Pollyanna kind of art, and champion the less comforting kind. No choice.

None of that was at all relevant to my lion kill picture, by the way. Its transformation was inspired by classical religious art that in its day was intended to be inspirational and positive.

Having said all that art-snob stuff, I don̢۪t ask anyone else to agree with my views. I̢۪m not interested at all in what you or anyone else believes on this subject, only in what I believe and why.

Originally posted by marnet: ... I think you don't really like photography as most people see it ;)

And you̢۪re right again, about my views on photography. I̢۪m not much interested in it as a craft. Photography for photography̢۪s sake is, for me, the epitome of dullness. What I like is photographs. I don̢۪t care who took them, or how, or with what.

For me the most interesting photographers in the digital age are the young people who love pictures but wouldn’t be caught dead in a photography store or reading a photography magazine. These people don’t know what they’re doing but they take most of the interesting photographs â€Â¦ again, don’t burst into flames over that claim; they also take most of the awful photographs (because they take most of the photographs).

Committed photo hobbyists are the least interesting photographers. Almost all their pictures are simply boring. And apparently deliberately boring too. Many are able to take interesting pictures, but seem to be reluctant to do so. The point of photography for them is not the photograph; it̢۪s photography. Photography to produce photography. It̢۪s one of those circular arguments, pointless and eventually self-consuming.

Professional photographers are mostly dull unless they are very good indeed, in which case they are (based on the few I̢۪ve met) mostly mad.

It̢۪s a hard life, being a critic.