pmc #5

Casarile, Milano Italy

I've been asking myself if it was the case to explain the reasons in subject choice, and subsequent picture choice (it's photographic fiction in the end). Mainly it is cause I've liked something I saw. For "liked" I am referring to a broad category of feelings. Maybe it could be appropriate to say that I like to feel. As much as in "I like industrial music". Than there is the mimetic question in photography but this is a far to large question to fit here. More, in this case there is a visual critique to architects (and landscape decision makers) focusing only on the "building". Architecture, as any other Art, is performed every day by ordinary people e not only by the great schoolmasters. Ideas in architecture travel across the time to reach the borders of common sense and necessity as much as any other idea. As for the picture I confess to not like very much the derive toward simplification in the approach of European (mostly German) "clean photography" (historically, 30 or 20 years ago, it had its merits and excellence though). To me it feels to much in assonance to the general dream of simplicity that I fear is (in part) at the base of our, continental wide, right derive. On the side of colors, and contrary to general demand, I still like the saturated ones by Turner and as rendered by kodachrome 25 (Velvia being a derivative, that I never liked at all, in my latter film time my preferences went to AgfaChrome mainly for the green palette). In this case however I've been really conservative in the amount of saturation. Certainly you will see a different yellow than the one I see (the numbers being the same) but it is pretty near to how it was out of the camera (daylight white).

pmc #4

Conca Fallata, Milano Italy

"The study of landscape history contributes its share to the new approach by reminding us, among other things, that since the beginning of history humanity has modified and scarred the environment to convey some message, and that for our own peace of mind we should learn to differentiate among those wounds inflicted by greed and destructive fury, those which serve to keep us alive, and those which are inspired by a love of order and beauty, in obedience to some divine law. The whole inhabited world, from the highlands of Peru to the heart of Asia is marked by vast circles and parallel lines and spirals, great avenues of monoliths, many dating back thousands of years: signs of our sense of responsibility for the survival of the earth and its people. Could much the same not be said of our immense grid landscapes, our geometrically designed cities, our parks and wilderness areas ? "
J.B Jackson "A Sense of PLACE, a sense of TIME"

NOTE: Added a few more lines to mitigate the somewhat apodictic flavor. Many thanks to Mike for the pro :-D critique.

pmc #3 Vacancy

Cerello--Battuello, Milano Italy

Taken yesterday. It was a hot, sunny and windy day. The air was crystal clear a thing that rarely happens in the south of Milan. Goethe called it "The Misty" for good reasons. Given my habit to take casual detours I rely heavily on memory to remember places this time I was so taken by the sensation the hot sun was giving me that I forgot to pay attention to the name of the place. I've bought a gps recorder but most of the times I forget it home. Hope that the next affordable camera could have one incorporated. The picture was taken around noon as the harsh shadows testify.

I'm leaving for a short vacancy of five days. Forgive me to not reply immediately to eventual comments. In Sassello where I will be I don't have an Internet connection.

pmc #2.1 Reading the world

Trezzano sul Naviglio, Milano Italy

As I have told in reply to Kent's comment in the last post pmc (Post Modern Condition) is my way to categorize a set of images I take in between some specific theme I'm working on. They all have as subject the stratification of human expression and identity in landscape. Landscape in historical sense has always been about human/land interaction as the word origin implies: literally a piece of land. The stratification may be read along several lines. For a reference to the main ones see here. I've posted some more references here.
In the 20th century fine art landscape photography has been intended mostly as a source of feelings or remembrances. The informational side has been progressively abandoned. Even in the German School of the Bekers the informational side is somewhat sacrificed in favor to more pictorial values. On the other side one of the main problems of a photographer is to obtain that his pictures are looked at for a somewhat longer time then the usual few seconds. I think that aesthetic values in photography have found most of the time as a byproduct of the more functional uses. Only in somewhat recent times and mostly with the so called fine-art photography the aesthetic function has become dominant. I'm not sure, given the strict connection of the media with the real, that this has any sense at least for me.

pmc #2

Trezzano sul Naviglio, Milano Italy

Post Modern Condition. pmc #1

Lacchiarella, Milano Italy

"I earlier stressed the spontaneous capacity of even small children to tag facts according to whether they belong to one or another pretend world, or to the real world, and moreover to be able to cross imaginatively between worlds without confusion. This is a fundamental human faculty with, again, crucial survival value: an imaginative species whose members could not distinguish seeing a tiger in the forest from day dreaming about a tiger in the forest would have been at a distinctive competitive disadvantage. But the manifest evolved ability to discriminate between what is true or valid in one world from what is fantasy does not mean that everything in a make-believe fantasy world is a make-believe fantasy fact."
Denis Dutton “The art instinct” 2009

A distinctive tract of several idealistic variants in humanistic disciplines (Philosophy of art included) is the way in which connections with reality (the real tiger in the forest) are established. From that point of view reality is always something to be interpreted and scrutinized as a possible source of forgery. It is not a case that some vulgar deviations end up either denying it either necessitating its repair.

In many cases there is always a perceived contradiction or rupture, supposedly newly formed, as the starting point of a theorization.

It is the case of the outcome of my recent second reading of Lyotard's “Post modern condition”. I've become acquainted with his seminal writing 25 years ago (more or less) as a consequence of my reading of a couple of articles in “Domus Magazine” (an Italian Architecture Magazine) by “Achille Bonito Oliva” founder of the so called “Transavanguardia”. The concept exposed where so crippled that I felt the need to go to the starting point.

At the time the reading impressed me a lot. It was the time of the death of ideologies and my vision of the new world disclosing was that of a sea upon which ideas, concepts, credences from different context, times and even intentions where scattered as floatsams. A gigantic junk yard of clashing symbols conveniently adapted.

But year after year it became clear to me that what Lyotard was perceiving as a characterization of the information society was indeed a description of the way in which life goes on in our culture in general. I wont call it evolution since the term incorporates a somewhat optimistic hope in a progress whatever nature it has.

I've already treated the concept of anachronism, a fundamental force in cultural motions.

To be more clear I'm not interested here in the so called “Postmodern art”. Frankly its flavor is to much on the side of the “Modernism” in its search of the “new”, Lyotard himself is sure to have found a new development. Plus the related artistic movement, at the time, was related to more constructive arts than photography as architecture or painting (mash ups included). To be exact PostModern artists where still searching for something new to be chewed by Art Critics, so more than looking at a state of affairs it come, in artistic terms, to the creation of heavily symbol based new contents.

But photographers have to deal with reality. If we need a picture of a tiger we have to face one or photoshop one from somebody who faced it (down to the chain to your liking considering that for each surviving tiger there could be, at least, ten pictures). As a descriptive art photography is not meant to formulate possible futures unless turned into something else.

So I've come to the theme “Post Modern Condition” (pmc) as a solution in categorizing some landscapes I'm doing and as a manifesto for my purely descriptive approach to reality. Generally my themes go along with some specific location. But a generic container for images sometimes comes in handy. To cite a famous case there is the one from “Mario Giacomelli” who used to keep a generic container for the not easy to classify pictures or the ones taken while developing a specific theme but not related.

quadro #22 4floor: views from my balcony

I was looking for an option to break out from the series scheme I used in the last months. I confess to have a somewhat monotonic ongoing in everything, a thing that I admire in Atget. But serialization is causing me some delay in publishing pictures from other themes that I find worth communicating.