42. Shape

It is one of those nights tonight. A night when if I hadn't made a commitment to this blog to participate on a daily level that I wouldn't have posted at all. It's late, the day was full. I was sick most of the week. As an artist I feel that I have ample excuses not to make art.

When it is hard to be creative I always fall back on the rules. Most compositions are built out of basic geometry. And by stripping down the world that I view through the lens into those simple geometric shapes I can try to create a formal composition. Whether it is stellar or not... that's another question. But alas... the blog continues.

Early modernist paved the way. They left representation behind and allowed simple formalism to be enough in the photograph. My favorite of them being Paul Strand who's early work was aligned with in the pictorialist style, quite opposite his later contrasty bold patterns & forms in his modernist work. The pictorialist aesthetic was soft, and due to the photographic process used (platinum or gum bichromate) suggestive in appearance resembling more of a charcoal drawing than a photograph. Strand's mentor at the time was Lewis Hine, the social documentary photographer - his work was full of narrative bias that pulled on each heart string. I often wondered how all these styles were reconciled. A young pictorialist photographer taught by a social documentary photographer than ends up being one of the first modernist photographers. The answer? Although Strand is best known for the sharp modernist images that emphasize shapes, he simultaneously continue to photograph people on the street in his own documentary style. Many were even printed in the warm and soft platinum process - a nod to one of the pictorials' favorites.

As an artist that works in the photographic medium the question that I am asked the most? What is your subject matter. It is a question that I fail to answer in any articulate manner. I don't have one style or one favorite subject. May be that is my down fall? If my work was more consistent it may be more recognizable and more marketable. But at as a artist (and film maker) Strand was not pigeoned-holed into one style or even one subject matter. I am not trying to equate my work with Strand's, but I do feel because he paved the way it is OK to entertain different styles and subject matter.

Paul Strand