Comments on: spirit and making http://the-space-in-between.com/2004/08/02/spirit-and-making/ "...that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)." Mon, 08 Sep 2008 08:56:00 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Bill http://the-space-in-between.com/2004/08/02/spirit-and-making/#comment-13 Bill Tue, 23 Aug 2005 19:20:55 +0000 http://the-space-in-between.com/?p=9#comment-13 I also attended the Prague workshop where Vojta visited, maybe we were classmates? If it wasn't the exact one you describe, it was another that unfolded in exactly the same manner. And the impression left on me - by him and by his unbelievable pictures - remains profound. At the time I was a newspaper photographer making a kind of transition to personal documentary work. I did offer up my then-portfolio to him, which he responded to much like he did to the girl in your post. But I did and still do consider his example to be perhaps the highest 'bar' in photography of this kind. The fact that he's almost entirely unknown (seemingly by choice) is remarkable. Bill www.billcrandall.com I also attended the Prague workshop where Vojta visited, maybe we were classmates? If it wasn’t the exact one you describe, it was another that unfolded in exactly the same manner. And the impression left on me - by him and by his unbelievable pictures - remains profound. At the time I was a newspaper photographer making a kind of transition to personal documentary work. I did offer up my then-portfolio to him, which he responded to much like he did to the girl in your post. But I did and still do consider his example to be perhaps the highest ‘bar’ in photography of this kind. The fact that he’s almost entirely unknown (seemingly by choice) is remarkable.

Bill

http://www.billcrandall.com

]]> By: VV Veen http://the-space-in-between.com/2004/08/02/spirit-and-making/#comment-12 VV Veen Tue, 03 Aug 2004 17:42:29 +0000 http://the-space-in-between.com/?p=9#comment-12 The Pedestrian Universal Ha! I know I'm unduly ignoring the big, profoundish body of your entry, but "pedestrian"? Ha! That literary self-acknowledgement makes me hoot. It IS indeed pedestrian to entertain such a desire, however, dealing with the stark, fragmented social conditions behind such a desire seems more dire and consuming: commonplace perhaps, but not pedestrian. Earnestly desiring the Elysian breezes of Pebble Beach is truly pedestrian: Target, Kafka, Gursky, Brian Ulrich, Norman Rockwell, Fox News. I'm reading Thomas Mann (in translation) (again) (I suck) (but it would take literally six years to read in German) (are these parentheticals pedestrian, i suddenly ask myself?) -- Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus" in which everyone's an artist, intellectual, or ardent cultural devotee. Strict, obvious, and contentedly accepted class divisions reinforce Mann's fictional ability to supersede the pedestrian and linger in a site of metaphorical purity and reification: the sterile peaks of the Magic Mountain... The moral of the story... (maybe...) For better or worse Mann's literary aristocracy has been swept away. Everything's become pedestrian. Its unparalled commonality both divides and unites us. My parents dragged me to banal paradise after paradise-- island after island. Ha! It would have been perfect "This American Life" fodder: comic impotence of the subject before the pedestrian universal. Is not photography itself pedestrian? Does not its history-- as well as its innate formal proclivities-- seem dangerously entertwined with my father's hellish Hawaii and the exaltation of the merely ordinary? Is it any surprise that Mann's world rapturously unravels at the first moment that recorded sound is heard: ontology, politics, and photography collide and collude... It's really a much bigger bite than I had intended to chew on upon just waking and methinks I shall eschew the remainder and instead plunder my morning coffee: a pedestrian event? v. van The Pedestrian Universal

Ha! I know I’m unduly ignoring the big, profoundish body of your entry, but “pedestrian”? Ha! That literary self-acknowledgement makes me hoot. It IS indeed pedestrian to entertain such a desire, however, dealing with the stark, fragmented social conditions behind such a desire seems more dire and consuming: commonplace perhaps, but not pedestrian. Earnestly desiring the Elysian breezes of Pebble Beach is truly pedestrian: Target, Kafka, Gursky, Brian Ulrich, Norman Rockwell, Fox News. I’m reading Thomas Mann (in translation) (again) (I suck) (but it would take literally six years to read in German) (are these parentheticals pedestrian, i suddenly ask myself?) — Thomas Mann’s “Doktor Faustus” in which everyone’s an artist, intellectual, or ardent cultural devotee. Strict, obvious, and contentedly accepted class divisions reinforce Mann’s fictional ability to supersede the pedestrian and linger in a site of metaphorical purity and reification: the sterile peaks of the Magic Mountain…

The moral of the story… (maybe…)

For better or worse Mann’s literary aristocracy has been swept away. Everything’s become pedestrian. Its unparalled commonality both divides and unites us. My parents dragged me to banal paradise after paradise– island after island. Ha! It would have been perfect “This American Life” fodder: comic impotence of the subject before the pedestrian universal.

Is not photography itself pedestrian? Does not its history– as well as its innate formal proclivities– seem dangerously entertwined with my father’s hellish Hawaii and the exaltation of the merely ordinary? Is it any surprise that Mann’s world rapturously unravels at the first moment that recorded sound is heard: ontology, politics, and photography collide and collude…

It’s really a much bigger bite than I had intended to chew on upon just waking and methinks I shall eschew the remainder and instead plunder my morning coffee: a pedestrian event?

v. van

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