July 2011 Archives
(Drawing)
Copyright 2011 Malcolm Ryder
(Postcard)
Decommisioned military sites are re-purposed as necessary. In this documentary landscape image, the distillation of the environment offers a description that catalogs evidence without proofs, featuring the implied design of intentions versus the actual forms of incidents.
The importance of the picture to the imagery is that the imagery is so recurring, that showing it once is the same as seeing the place repeatedly -- before, now, and again. That takes the picture beyond being "descriptive" to being "prescriptive", particularly for those who have never seen the place before.
In surveying the property, some viewers will see the "potential" in it while others will see the deficiency. The shot of the place is sensitive to timing: right now the place could go either way.
But in the picture it will always be that way, going neither way, which separates its preentation from its reality.
Treasure Island, CA
(Copyright 2011 Malcolm Ryder)
(Poster)
Copyright 2011 Malcolm Ryder
(Drawing)
Once a drawing has allowed something to make sense on its own terms, the drawing is finished. The problem is to figure out what the the subject ought to be able to say about itself, and to get out of its way. But you have to make what it needs to use. In tis case, what was being said was "landmark".
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(Postcard)
The drawing and the postcard both depend on the same thing: having enough information up front to make what's left in defining, and what's left out irrelevant.
One of the differences between the drawing and this postcard is that as the drawing gets bigger it becomes more of a poster, while as the postcard gets bigger it becomes more of a drawing.
(Postcard)
Some notions, such as "California suburb", are just containers that people pour things into.
Some pictures simply test whether the current content of the notion is open to re-evaluation.
Copyright 2011 Malcolm Ryder
