wow, b real. very nice. metallic sun water.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 7 2006 18:11 utc | 4

beq- yes. good eye!
aigin- how did this image come to you?
see beq’s #1. i could never have created it either 🙂
thanks for the comments, all & thanks to b for hosting/posting!

Posted by: b real | Jul 7 2006 19:34 utc | 6

Niiice! Brings me back to time spent rowing through the reeds of a salt marsh. Be it photograph? Oils? Encaustic? Thanks for sharing, b real. Love how organic it feels, and somehow historic and even pastoral, like a view into the canal system of an ancient civilization.

Posted by: conchita | Jul 7 2006 20:58 utc | 8

Oh, I just want to jump in….a visual antidote to to the heat, I feel cooler just looking at it. I love this!

Posted by: Amurra | Jul 7 2006 23:22 utc | 10

yes, these are photographs. au naturale. the only post-production work necessary was to crop, resample, and lighten each image just a smidgen so that they weren’t too dark. otherwise, in this particular series i limit myself strictly to the documentation of alternative ways of seeing the natural world as it presents itself to us. first nature can be sooo sublime.
sadly, the dreams of this swamp are threatened. peabody coal is hoping to build a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant w/i 90 miles of this national wildlife refuge, 8000 acres of which are designated as a wilderness area. there are already problems in the area due to air pollution, and the new prairie state power plant will add another “25,000 additional tons of air pollution a year” according to oppositional sources. and “even by the company’s own estimates, if the plant ran every day, it would release more than 11 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, though these emissions are not subject to federal regulation. That’s roughly equivalent to the annual output of more than 1.8 million cars in normal use, according to EPA spokesman John Millett.”
so these are dreams for now, but they could portend nightmares very soon

Posted by: b real | Jul 8 2006 6:16 utc | 12

abstract expressionism in nature, fluid, makes me thirsty.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 8 2006 8:52 utc | 14

beq, fauxreal, annie, noirette, conchita — you guys got it right away; now that b real said it’s a photo I can see the perspective, where the top of the frame is wider than the bottom. But I first saw a painting.
My ignorant eye interpreted the flat onscreen image as a flat canvas … I can still see heaps and mounds of paint, sculpted by b real’s hand … a method I have seen a couple of good examples of by other artists.
Pace rememberinggiap, now signing as r’giap, “merci b real.”

Posted by: jonku | Jul 8 2006 10:55 utc | 16

Claro.

Posted by: jonku | Jul 8 2006 12:40 utc | 18

Alas, if ya ever been down ‘nawlins way, you know that there is a posionous beauty to the swamps. Ever get caught in a “gator hole” staring into a gator’s eyes or a nest of water moccasin the quite beauty turns fast into heart pounding terror. They (these boggs), can be deceiving , and quite dangerous. As many southern hassocks and bogs, in mississippi, georgia, florida etc…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 8 2006 15:04 utc | 20

i like the reflection of the clouds in the top rt corner of SD1. very dreamlike

Posted by: annie | Jul 8 2006 16:43 utc | 22

yeah, slothrop, I almost didn’t say it was a photo (well, didn’t directly), because, like jonku, I can see the paint. you just have to keep from reading the comments to maintain the illusion…in more ways than one…considering the content of most comments on this site.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jul 8 2006 18:38 utc | 24

In his classic essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin maintained that when a painting or other work of art is reproduced, and made generally available, it loses something. It loses “its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” It also loses, he argued, its “authenticity … its testimony to the history which it has experienced .. [its] traditional value” within a given “cultural heritage.” Although the reproduction of an art work makes its acquisition more democratic, the reproduction is also less sacred. Ripped from its original context, its original meanings are lost. Benjamin called that which is lost in the reproduction of art the “aura.” What was special in the original – its aura – is liquidated, fragmented, deconsecrated in the copy.
– stuart ewen, all consuming images: the politics of style in contemporary culture, p. 93

in the end, it is that concept of the aura to which benjamin refers that i desire to preserve, if possible at this point. our manipulative commodity cultures are already saturated in countless diembodied images/objects which, separated from their original sources, peeling surface form from matter & extinguishing true context, contribute to our collective alienation from reality, ourselves & the natural world. hopefully, the integration of the image w/ its source, instead of being a buzzkill, stimulates further appreciation & awareness of the real world that (still) resides outside the artificial illusions (deceptions) of modern life. don’t see them as objects, but, instead, as another way of seeing.

Posted by: b real | Jul 9 2006 0:18 utc | 26

hehe.
one thing about benjamin’s famous essay is the dual character of mass-produced art: it’s sudden availability contributes to decommodification on the one hand, and on the other hand is stripped of its “aura.” this leads to the interesting question whether decommodification, so essential to the liberation of human beings, destroys the power of the object to say anything at all. the dialectic here expresses in ways we scarcely imagine, just how deeply the catastrophe of consumerism afflicts humanity.
I was thinking more along the lines of why I feel cheated when I discover that what appears to be abstract art is swiftly betrayed as photography. this is no criticism of your fine composition, only an observation of my own reaction to the piece.

Posted by: slothrop | Jul 9 2006 1:14 utc | 28

b real
what benjamin calls aura – i have named in my work here – an interior symbolic order
an order that is in & of itself materialist
an order that by it’s nature is mysterious & a mystery
i have constantly worked with the disinherited but it has only been in the last 15 years that i have undertood practically their proximity to the essence of that order
without psychoanalysis, without metaphysics, without jung & without the false spirituality of ‘things’ – i have begun to see in many different people in many different cultures – a disitegration of being that is utterly related from that order
this is to say that before education & the fucked family destroys us – which it does at an even younger age today than 50 years ago – there is a relation we have with elemnets, natural & otherwise that are deeply connected to our way of seeing. the way we each understand a tree, a wheel or a table are born in thes moments & i assume are the only things as children we have confidence in – because they constitute our material worlds, our auras if you will
& these auras are destroy with great premeditation & with the careless thoutlessness that is characterist of those who exercise power through their vulgarity of which rupert murdoch is the most obvious example
the forces of power create diretly, then indirecly – for the most part chaotically (but i repeat that inside this chaos there is great premeditation)- that creates in the people disassociation, disintegration & degredation
i witness here in france younger & younger people who are profoundly lost – at a level of interiority – religion would suggest that it is because they lack spiiritual values – i on the contrary believe they are lost because they are disconnected from those images, symbols, legends & auras that give them breath
this creates with the dispossessed a relation with words that is more ‘knowing’ than a martin heidegger could have ever imagined
i try to work with text to get people back to that interior order which is by it nature individual & sovereign & it is in them finding that individuality & sovereignty that leads them to greater choices in their responsibility
sometimes i feel guilty in the sense that i am asking people to try to live mutiplicity in a slaughterhouse & often these people have already tasted elements of the slaughterhouse – that would be toomuch for others to live with – thay have been tortured, witnessed the murder of their families, seen massacres, have been raped or battered, have been institutionalised or jailed, have felt hunger & thirst that most people have not yet tasted
so what i am saying crudely – is what you are saying about these auras for me has a paradoxical solidity very connected to the questions of living in a world where murderers can sing & record hadji girl which is the logical coninuum of andy warhols electric chairs
if you like, photograps such as yours, are wells & we need to go to them or we too shall die of something much worse than thirst

Posted by: r’giap | Jul 9 2006 1:16 utc | 30

in the end, it is that concept of the aura to which benjamin refers that i desire to preserve, if possible at this point.
far be it from me to challenge the artist description but i do feel it is much more than that. every moment , every thing, has a spirit. you were there, a witness, you saw. your photograph is yes a preservation but it is more than that. it carries with it the witnessing of the moment. someone else could have been there and never seen, or experienced what you did.
once there was a special place i hiked to, in the mule mountains in arizona, only available on foot, or mule, no paths. the most beautiful place about 10 miles in, at one time a goat farm. rather trecheous getting there but incredible place. i brought a friend once a photographer. the things she saw just astounded me. i was absorbed by the vista and she was aware of the minutest details of nature. the patterns in leaves, insects, my god. at first i was impatient w/her, then i started to see them. like taking acid or something. i believe replicating art is much different w/most media and in this regard i agree w/ Benjamin. as every thing carries the enery or spirit of its creation the spirit or energy cannot be present in a replica. but photography is different becaue it is a witnessing art. yes you preserve it but more than that the testimony of your own aura is intertwined within your art for you would not have seen it had your aura not been aligned.

Posted by: annie | Jul 9 2006 1:36 utc | 32

okay, i am going to try something. i have been thinking about b real’s statement that in this case he is limiting himself “strictly to the documentation of alternative ways of seeing the natural world as it presents itself to us” since i read it earlier today. in this comment i would like to share my thoughts about that and then i will go back and read what walter benjamin, annie, r’giap, etc., have to say and possibly then i will write something additional.
i loved b real’s conceptual approach, particularly because photography is so much about how you see things. taking photographs changes how i see the world. i notice that much more. i notice things i would have passed by (most likely lost in thought) had i not begun to “look” at the world around me. sometimes it is the pattern of bark on a tree or a crack in the sidewalk or the way the light hits a building or the juxtaposition of things or it is a person’s face or hands. now my eyes see these things. and then there is the process of making the image – composing the elements, determining the lighting, staying loyal to the subject, making a statement (or not). i am intrigued by b real’s thesis and what it says about how he sees and we see and how we experience nature. i like that simplification of the process in turn opens the mind to consider how you experience nature and what is its larger meaning.
b real, would like very much to see more from this series. please.

Posted by: conchita | Jul 9 2006 1:49 utc | 34

an order that is in & of itself materialist
it is only the manifestation that is materialistic
an order that by it’s nature is mysterious & a mysterythere is a relation we have with elemnets, natural & otherwise that are deeply connected to our way of seeing. the way we each understand a tree, a wheel or a table are born in thes moments & i assume are the only things as children we have confidence in – because they constitute our material worlds, our auras if you will
absolutely
& these auras are destroy with great premeditation & with the careless thoutlessness that is characterist of those who exercise power through their vulgarity of which rupert murdoch is the most obvious example
i believe they are drummed into us way before robert murdock, we learn to shed our instincts quite early on. imagine if we could follow a path like a bird. if other talents were honored and encouraged. if we had rituals at adolesence that joined us w/nature? if we connected to the food we ate and the air we breath. the multipications of abuse and distance from our basic need and requirements as a species have been so co opted for conveniences, some for survival, some because we have just lost touch, and by the time we have been fully processed thru the system we are ready to follow a path that is so distant from our origins as a part of the planet. it is coming to the point where extinction is an option. i hope the planet survives us.
i’m veering off here, thanks b real for showing me what you see. i would like to see more too.