Ken Smith Photo Journal

I had an opportunity this last weekend to blow the dust off my Burke and James 5×7 camera. For a couple years it has been a shining sculpture in my living room, a relic and reminder of a past when things were not so electronic. I put it to work photographing some turtle shells I am incorporating in an art piece. It wasn’t an easy matter, for I had to reacquaint myself with the other world which I had left behind for so long. I needed to get out my handheld pentax spot meter, fill the wood film holders with efke 100 asa sheet film…I had to clean the darkroom sink of the accumulation gathered there as the darkroom became a multi-purpose room.

Then, for several hours I got to play in an earthy way, with things made of wood and glass. I needed to remind myself to put the lens cap back on the lens after focusing, before removing the dark slide from the film holder. Everything was alien, and yet familiar. It came back with a sweet memory. Again, I went back to the school boy timer…..”one thousand one, one thousand two…”, like in some hide and seek game with light and shadow. The exposure on the old french darlot lense was 4 seconds at f22, then I quickly put the lenscap back on the lens. It has no shutter.

I went to the darkroom, familiarizing myself again with the beakers, the formulas of the chemistry, the gralab timer. Jeez, I could screw up at any point and ruin the film. I could only develop one sheet at a time, having slipped it sideways in a curve inside the 1-liter Paterson tank, emulsion side in. I was using the two part Pyrocat HD developer, which leaves a brown stain on the film, and was so beautiful it could be a finished picture in negative form.

The whole process was so antique compared to what I had been living with in my photography for such a long time. Every part of it could have been a century ago, or timeless…what men had dealt with before they knew about things binary. But in a hybrid affliction I scanned the film into my computer to print on my epson. It is all pretty awesome, but I didn’t know it would be, till I actually went thru the compete process. Now, I need to do it again and again. The 5×7 is no longer a monolith in the corner, but of real use. I won’t leave digital either – I am a heretic to nothing. I move through the shadows, enticed towards the unmentioned taboo by two lovers, for one alone cannot satisfy me.

It seems like I am all over the place in images presented in this journal…..a nude, a flower, a pilot, a chicken. They have one thing in common. They are the pages turned in my photographic adventure. Something in common might be they are all an attempt to express a moment, or transcend that moment. There is something ‘behind’ every thing that is consciously seen, and maybe the quest in my work, is the attempt to express that mystery.

This image is of a neighbor’s proud free range chicken. It was photographed with a Salyut-C Hasselblad look-alike, Vega 120mm f2.8 lens, and Hungarian Macophot 100 speed film. The Vega is my favorite lens on this camera.

I am still thinking about Spain. When I lived in Madrid, I would make weekend trips out into the countryside. A couple of times I visited El Escorial, a monestary and palace built by Felipe II in the last half of the 1500s.

This image of the monestary and gardens was made with my trusty Canon F1 on Tri-X film.

Below, is another image of a beautiful hallway in the building.

I began flying when I was 15, and my first adventures in writing and photography were in expressing my love for aviation. I wrote many articles illustrated with photographs for aviation magazines, was a regional editor, and had a monthly column.

One of my good friends who I hung out with at his grass airfield in Texas, had a saying. After flying our restored 1940’s classic airplanes in a beautiful formation flight at sunset, landing under the wide Texas sky….Jess would say, “just another day in aviation”. It was a bold understatement, for we knew there was something special about the sky and flying airplanes that went all the way back to the earliest adventures, and we felt fortunate to be sharing that legacy.

This picture is of another friend flying his Fleet biplane on an afternoon over Texas, making a tight turn. I was shooting from the front cockpit, looking back towards the tail. The Canon F-1 was set with a slow shutter speed to show the motion in the turn, and a 20mm wide angle lense was used to broaden the scene. It was shot on slide film and I am partial to the color version, but I go back and forth between color and sepia versions. They each have a unique feeling.

One of the reasons I started this blog was the opportunity to show images I have made or are making that may never be part of my fine art photography website. In the lee of the recent Valentine’s Day celebration, I thought this rose image appropriate.

I titled it Rose Spider, tho I’m sure there isn’t such a spider in existence, except for maybe this one day. The image was made years ago with my trusty Canon F-1, and 50mm f3.5 macro lens. Remember Kodachrome film?

White Tree

More than a few visitors to the recent opening of my nude show were surprised that all of the prints on the wall were shot with film. In fact, one was even made as late as 2005 with an old Burke and James 5×7 view camera, using film large enough you can hold it up to the window like it was already a print. Even with all the digital photography in our lives, there is still something special about shooting with film. I have recently been pulling out my medium format equipment, and I have images in my mind’s eye destined to be made with the 5×7. I have a shelf and a half in the freezer that is stuffed with film. And I’ve even arranged the darkroom sink – moved the ink cartridge filling equipment – so I can develop some 5×7 paper negatives.

I was reminded of the sentiment and the sensibility when I read Mark Tucker’s recent blog post…  http://marktucker.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/went-blind-again/#comments

Make sure you read the comments too, for these photographers are bringing something to discuss that is serious to them. There seems to be a wave bouncing off the shore of digital work, getting many reenthused with film and the machines that expose it. We all have our own reasons, sometimes logical or simply an aesthetic loneliness.

White Tree was made with a film-shooting plastic Holga camera in 1994. I am printing this one 20×20” – one of 10 pieces for a gallery show in Iowa in July.

                                                                                                                                                                                                              photo by yuko ishii

The opening reception for my new show was yesterday. It was well attended and there was good food and some discussion. I expected a bit of controversy about the nudes, but other than a few giggles from a couple 20 year old girls, the work was responded to seriously. There was talk about photographic technique from some of the other photographers, which is normally the case. I was surprised there was little talk about the philosophy behind the work, which is of great interest to me. The thing that makes it art is the most elusive and enchanting.

From the viewers, I heard which pieces were favorite, some were considered for purchase, and there were sales. About half of my handmade books sold. The Studio owners – Salyna and Jennifer – were beautiful, charming hosts. Thank you!

I will be having a gallery talk and discussion later in the month, and we will spend some time on the artist statement, the artist and the model. How I entice art from myself and my subject matter, whether it is still life, landscape, or working with a woman.

I got an email the other day. “Hello,  I am so excited that I came across your artworks on internet search, I am interested in purchasing the following works from you….”

The writer wanted to know more information, prices, etc. So I took some time out from making books for the show, and put together prices for the two editioned sizes, matting costs if that was wanted, some description material.

Next day I got a response to my email. “Good to read you again.” Eager to go ahead with purchases. I am moving to a new home. Please send me your address and phone so my shipping agent can contact you….

My radar popped up, for I knew then it was probably a scam. A waste of my time, an attempt to get personal information, or launder a bad cashier’s check. I had heard of scams where a purchaser buys something, sending you a cashier’s check. You deposit it, and send the goods. Then the buyer decides he doesn’t want the goods, and please wire a refund back. After the refund is made, you learn from your bank that the cashier’s check was fraudulent, and you’ve lost the cash of the refund. There are places along the way to stop the scam, but if it carries thru, you come out the loser.

So I tested the buyer by asking first for his shipping address – that I don’t ship to all countries, and stating that I would take PayPal in payment, where he/she can use a credit card or a bank account. Needless to say, I never heard back from the criminal, not one word. Why do we need to deal with this, when there is real work to do in life?

Yesterday I drove down the mountain to town to ship UPS and get a few groceries. I always carry a camera even for mundane trips…a leftover from my days working for a newspaper, for one never knows what will occur. It was foggy, and on the way home I made a few images in a place we call ‘the cut’. It is a half-mile gash in the rock where water runoff collects in a bog, lots of desiduous trees, and of course the paved road. As I looked over the images this morning, one stood out for its soft color, it’s geometrics. I immediately responded to it.

Fog in the Cut

I was amazed….for as we zoomed in, cut away, removed the unnecessary, the image would become stronger. I would go away with a grease-penciled box around the chosen space, and a size scribbled on the edge. If there was time, I would go make another print to size. Usually there was no time for that, and I just went directly to the guy doing the copy camera work, gave him the specs….and went back to a typewriter to write a cutline caption.

So I now sit at my computer, with the image on the screen. Sometimes, I grab a couple envelopes forming an “L”, and hold them up to the screen, imagining a new border here or there. Sometimes it makes the image much better, or creates a whole new image with a different sense and presence.

Fog in the Cut (crop)

Nude with Leaf

‘the female gesture’ is the title of my nude show opening February 6 at The Studio, in Twisp, WA. As is usual when putting together a one-person show, the artist needs to write an artist statement, which is something said on one page about the show’s content, what is behind the work, and maybe a bit about the artist. It is always difficult to write in words what is essentially the task of the work on the walls to portray visually. In the Reading section on the right sidebar, is a copy of the artist statement I wrote to go with the show.

In a short paragraph I can summarize the entire page I wrote:  Working with the nude model is a special adventure, but at the same time is no more sacred than working with the still life or the landscape. The difference is it is a human being. But the work is not about the artist and the model as they live their everyday lives among society, so much as it about the two participants and what they have brought to the moment of collaboration together. It is about the individual and universal feelings expressed in the visual image that comes from that collaboration. I hope I did not dance around the issue of sexuality in the statement about the work. What I attempted to say was, although many photographers describe their work with the nude as about shape, form, and light….and that it isn’t about sex….that is impossible. For we are all sexual beings along with all the other aspects of our ‘beingness.’ I described that complete self as a fabric woven of all the threads that make us up. We cannot select one thread or another, shut off one part of ourselves, as though we are made of boxes, some open, some left unopened. The model and the artist have put it all into the work. So the work contains all the feelings it should if the work is successful, and that is what makes it beautiful, and felt strongly by the viewer.