Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Insult

I don't take offense when someone doesn't like a given print of mine. People generally don't tell you that they think this or that print is kind of lame- especially if they are strangers. It wouldn't be polite. But people I know well will sometimes. Of course all art is subjective and I've found there to be a wide variance in which of my prints will appeal to a given person. So far I haven't had anyone come to me and say "Your work across the board completely sucks." Maybe once I've been at this long enough that will happen. But even then I don't think I'd get too upset about it if it did.

But at Mayfair a woman said something to me that made me want to- I don't know- give her a kind of dressing down. A couple had wondered into my booth and were examining my work. They were both Penn State alumni and very much like you'd think Penn State alumni would be. For those not familiar with PSU or the character of its student body let's just say football and beer are two of the most important things in their lives. They were very friendly- and no doubt lived in a suburban development somewhere with at least one SUV. So we chatted a bit and they offered some compliments about my work. Then as they were leaving my booth the woman said "Maybe if you make enough money at this you can travel someplace exotic and photograph it."

Yes. If only I could travel someplace exotic I'd be an awesome photographer. Because travel makes photography awesome. I've said this before and I'll say it again: travel does not impart artistic merit to photography (or any other art.) Traveling to every exotic place and photographing every exotic scene there isn't art. It's tourism. Capturing scenes everyone already knows is beautiful is a photographic cliche and in my humble opinion such work has very little- if any- artistic significance. It might serve as eye-candy for some suburban housewife (like the one mentioned above) to throw on her wall but otherwise means little.

I said earlier there were some good things about Mayfair and indeed there were. One of those good things was another couple coming through my booth on a later day after the PSU alumni. This couple was a bit older- maybe in their fifties. The man was an amateur photographer and was quite complimentary of my work. We talked shop for a bit. He had taken some digital photography courses and had used some of the same equipment I was using. He made a very interesting comment to me and then repeated it to his wife. He was looking at my foliage pictures and said something to the effect of "It's really hard to take pictures like these around here (meaning within PA woodlands.) I'm not able to take pictures like these." And I said "Yes!" inside. This was the antidote to the alumni poisoning. Someone who has tried to do what I'm doing and knows instantly that the kinds of pictures I have are something beyond what your typical or even more advanced person walking into the woods in this area can take. It is pretty damn hard to remain in one's local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures of a nature that people haven't seen before. And this is why 99% (excepting still lifes/macros of flowers or whatever) of art festival photography is a product of travel. If you aren't truly talented you can always travel. So am I implying that 99% of all art festival photographers aren't truly talented? Of course I am. But it will take me a few posts to prove that point (though it's easier to do than you might think.)

I can on any day of the year and under any weather condition walk out into my local environment and take beautiful and interesting pictures. And I have the pictures to prove it (and no they aren't all on the website yet. So far I have around 700 pictures I've deemed worth making prints of so it's going to be a bit till I can fully express what I'm doing on the website.) I don't think too many people can do that.

I'll talk about some other exciting things that came out of Mayfair in subsequent posts.