Recently in art Category

Art Season is kicking off big time! Along with this show, there is the Melbourne Art Fair, and It's Not fair.

Albert Camus, novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, once said: 'After many years, during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport'.

Not everyone would agree that sport is the key to understanding human experience. But it's certainly true that Australians connect sport with anything from community life and personal achievement through to historical and political controversies.

[From Sellers Art Prize]

So much on; so little time!

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I quickly visited Sydney on Friday and Saturday, an exhaustive and exhausting 2 days of art food and walking! I didn't shoot as much as I would have liked, but, here is the first edit, from my time up there.

More on the Biennale itself later.

Here's a small slideshow, roughly cut together using sampled sounds from freesound.org. Credits to the following for sharing their samples/sounds and allowing them to be re-sampled, DJ Chronos, gleeman,j uskiddink.

In graphic design, Marian Bantjes says, throwing your individuality into a project is heresy. She explains how she built her career doing just that, bringing her signature delicate illustrations to storefronts, valentines and even genetic diagrams.

My online presence just grew by another site, this time the site is called Fine Art America and is the American equivalent of Redbubble.

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Whether this pans out to any sales or more recognition I have no idea, we'll see I guess.

I Recently signed up for another book publishing idea, this time over at, SoFoBoMo, the challenge is to produce 35 images in a pdf format book in one month. So I plan on uploading a book of 35 images minimum by the 19th of July. "SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month - a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish in 31 days.
SoFoBoMo 2010 is running from 1st June to 31st July."
Fingers crossed, I've a busy month ahead, a return to the EOTOB program for 2010, albeit a short 7 day stint this time, and a few days off to make images, in what can be gorgeous winter light.

This image comes from a flickr stream, by, Eric Fischer, in particular his set, Locals and Tourists Set. Red is for tourists and Blue for locals, yellow being for indeterminate photographers. I am surprised by the large amount of blue to the North of the city? And disappointed by the lack of blue to the West, MY neck of the woods.

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Louise Sacco at Gel 2010 (Museum Of Bad Art - MOBA) from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

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I have submitted images for consideration to either competitions or exhibitions to both the CCP and an American organisation called, Artists Wanted recently. The outcomes of both of these submissions won't be known for at least 2 or 3 months, so in the meantime, I sit and wait.... oh and make more images. The Artists Wanted competition/exhibition allows, public voting on each artists gallery, while the work is individually judged on its merits, so feel free to swing by and vote on my gallery.

Today, I have begun the ball rolling for two projects, an application for a PhD, and a show at the CCP. The show application, will focus on a body of work, I shot recently and may form a larger project, over time; one day a book I hope. The PhD, is at such an early developmental stage, I am reading a book that will help me decide where to go., the book is entitled, The Craft of Research. It has already proved to be a great help.

The list of show I want to see grows!

Frederick Sommer at Bruce Silverstein

Best known as a photographer, Sommer (1905-99) never restricted himself to one medium, and this sprawling, museum-quality survey shows how closely his photography, drawing, painting, and collage work were linked.

Frederick Sommer, Untitled, 1991, © Frederick and Frances Sommer Foundation, Courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery, NY
The photographs cover a lot of ground: desert landscapes, portraits, and nudes, pictures of cut-paper constructions, found-object assemblages, and Dubuffet-style abstractions conjured from smoke on glass or paint on cellophane. Hung alongside spidery drawings or more fluid, densely worked paintings, a wall of these images could spark enough energy to power the gallery. Collages of anatomical etchings underline the physicality and continue Sommer's focus on decay and mortality.

From The New Yorker.

[From AIPAD - News/Events]

So I spent the morning here reading the online issue of the New York Times, with particular attention to the arts section. Very disappointed I was, so I flipped over to one of my favourite archives of modernist theory American Suburb X. Some great articles, and worth a read, even if you feel modernism is dead. My one complaint, well two really, the formatting of the pages is broken in places making reading off and difficult at times, and the line height of the text a little tight for my liking in Safari, anyway. The pages can be awfully slow too. A small price however for the sheer volume of information provided. A must for all those interested in photography's reach in the late modernist period of art history.

I just wonder how the publishers of American suburb X are getting their hands on such material, while articles 6 to 10 years old may not be cutting edge, they certainly are still informative and when it comes to getting up to speed on post modernist theory,and a worthy leaping off point.

For anyone who cares, I'm reading some great books on Art photography, and creativity, at the moment.

• Source: Nature's Healing Role in Art and Writing, by Janine Burke, with a hat tip to one of my undergrad Lecturers Ian Lobb.
• The Reconfigured Eye - Visual truth in the Post-Photographic Era, by William J Mitchell, after seeing it referred to in, After Photography, by Fred Ritchin.

Source has allowed me to draw some possibly dangerous parallels between my life and several of history's well known artists, such as Hemingway and O'Keefe. I have learnt some interesting things too about early digital images from the reconfigured eye.

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This is a screen grab from iView Media Pro, it shows I have 108 images from 2009, queued up for upload,to flickr. My 2008 file has 34 also awaiting upload to flickr. Making a total of 142 images. Based on a loose regime of 3 images uploaded a week I have 47 weeks worth of images to upload. This is only counting my phone-camera, there are a few from my Nikon Coolpix 3700 and my Vistaquest to upload as well.

As I head into my 5th year of using flickr, looking back things have changed, changed dramatically. When I first started using flickr, I would upload almost daily, and spend innumerable hours connecting with all the other great people I'd 'meet'. Now, I have to remember to upload and some weeks it takes me so long to pick, which images to add, to keep the flow happening in my stream, I give up and leave it for a few days. Fortunately the altfotonet group still has some outstanding stuff, as does several others, where some cross posting occurs. Other changes to my online activity come from external sources like twitter and facebook. Now if I could just find a way to get paid for all my online activity?

Larry Sultan, California Photographer, Dies at 63
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: December 14, 2009
Larry Sultan, a highly influential California photographer whose 1977 collaboration, “Evidence” — a book made up solely of pictures culled from vast industrial and government archives — became a watershed in the history of art photography, died on Sunday at his home in Greenbrae, Calif. He was 63.

[read on Larry Sultan, California Photographer, Dies at 63 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com]

I have to admit, I've not seen much of Mr. Sultan's work, but the little I had has stuck in my mind, another book to add to my collection I guess.

16 October 2009 – 4 April 2010
Photography Gallery, Level 3
Free entry

[In 1967, the NGV established the first separate curatorial Department of Photography in an Australian art gallery and since that time we have delivered a continuous program of exhibitions and publications featuring the rich history of photography. The heart of our activities is based on the permanent collection which now numbers over 15,000 photographs, of which 3,000 works are by international artists. This year marks the 40th anniversary of our first acquisitions to the collection and, as such, it is timely to ‘re-view’ what has been achieved. National Gallery of Victoria]

read on...

I will be visiting this exhibition over the coming months I hope to use it for some inspiration in at least blogging, we shall see.

Eastman House is not only re-running the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape, from 1975; but this exhibition, entitled, Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art

The description “Dutch landscape” may evoke an idyllic vision reminiscent of Dutch landscape paintings, but today the Netherlands is known for its planned, manipulated landscape. In the last two decades a number of Dutch photographers and filmmakers have taken contemporary Dutch landscape and nature as their point of departure. George Eastman House presents a major survey of this new work, titled Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art, on view June 13 through Aug. 16. It is a companion show to the Eastman House summer exhibition New Topographics, originally mounted in 1975, illustrating the profound influence of that exhibition on the generations that have followed.

The tyranny of distance lingers.

gallery or street?

This article, by a British writer is tired of Bansky, I can't help but wonder; the irony of his work being sold in galleries?

[...stumbling across his work in alleys and splashed on buildings throughout London. And occasionally the artist has created work both bracingly timely and incisive (”NOLA", is a particularly good example). But it is impossible to contain the raw energy of street art in a formal art space, where any anti-establishment strains in his work are bled away beneath the expensive track lighting.]

Isn't selling this kind of art in a gallery the height of cultural hypocrisy anyway?

Hat tip to AVD

• "Beauty in Photography, Essays in Defense of Traditional Values"
• Why People Photograph

Completely unfashionable in today's post modern world, but an ongoing inspiration for me no less.

This is my favorite quote regarding, the job I do to pay the bils.

"We can give beginners directions, about how to use a compass,we can tell them stories about our exploration of different but possibly analogous geographies, and we can bless them with our caring, but we cannot know the unknown and thus make sure the path to real discovery"¹

¹ Page 39, Why People Photograph.

How quickly we forget... how quickly.

Soon to show Sony 2008 Photography Awards. Opening night, 14th of April, 7:30 -9:30pm, runs for 2 weeks

[From Obscura Gallery]

My apologies, as this is a flash driven site I can only link to the front page. Once there, click on either the right hand panel or the exhibitions link.

Thanks to "sergemarx" on twitter for the heads up.

The tyranny of distance, and idea proposed by, Geoffrey Blainey, is to some extent still in place, and sometimes the internet amplifies it, other times it diminishes it. Sometimes, both.

These exhibitions all look interesting, I found out about them via the internet, but of course it is not possible for me to visit any of them.

• The Animals are outside today
• The list on this page just makes me weep, I would so love to see more of Emmet Gowin's work in the flesh.
And on and on and on....

Of course seeing screen versions of these images, if the galleries in question have an online exhibition, in no way replaces the experience of seeing them in the flesh.

Or does it?

Looking at this site, today, I had an epiphany. Photography has reached the same place where painting was when it was famously announced that "from this day forward painting is dead"

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Here's how things looked in the early 1800's. you could almost argue a precursor to flickr.

Have things gone pear shaped?

Unless you've been living under a rock of late, jpgmag.com announced it would be closing this week.

This appears to have spurred a flurry of activity in the blogosphere, according to the a photoeditor blog. Plenty of opinions to boot as to why it folded. Personally I have no idea, other than perhaps the market can't handle an online and a print publication? The idea seemed great at the start from my perspective, but never sat that well with me, I wish it had continued, as I'm all for giving everyone a shot.

In other news, [thanks to poodly on flickr, who writes junk for code]RMIT, has set up an online journal, called Second Nature, and is taking scholarly submissions, of text, no word on images yet?

I realised today I may have muddied the waters slightly with my terminology, particularly in relation to the ideas about 'straight photography' and a 'fine print'. 'Straight photography' was a precursor to the 'Fine Print', the idea of a Fine Print is deeply entrenched in modernist ideas of what constitutes art. The fine print can be a means to an end, but isn't necessarily so for many artists. Emmet Gowin for example, makes sumptuous prints but his ideas and philosophy go beyond those of the object and far and beyond Ansel's ideas about art and photography.

I feel like I've opened a can of worms here, I'll see if I can dig up the abstract from my MA to help.

If I'm not back in a week send a search party!

Edit; well that didn't take so long after all. Download it and have a read if you are so inclined, please bear in mind that this is the summary, and the whole object needs to be seen t get a better idea of what I was on about. The finished piece, exists in the R.M.I.T. Library.

Life and time commitments make it difficult to plan shooting around good light and the best seasons these days, to then process film on top of that, means a lot, not to mention that materials, such as black and white papers, are running out as well. this puts me in a quandary and means, my creative energies would be better spent exploring ideas and the world around me, using other means, preferably with a lens and a light sensitive material of some sort.

Technological changes mean I can get good quality images quickly [excellent ones If I'm careful in an analogue sense] and easily using the smallest of devices. The caveat being they will probably only ever exist in cyber space.

Why then not explore other ideas now. I mean all that other stuff, I'd felt was important for all this time, is important, but how important in this image saturated media landscape? Why not just see if I can't just get the ideas across using the simplest of tools with nothing more to deal with then the 3 most important elements of photography, Light, Time, Space. well hey presto! Here I am using a mobile phone and or a small camera set to VGA, to hopefully get some idea across about the world I see and am somewhat incongruously part of, that I can share in real time or in a myriad of other ways.

There is somewhat of a leap of faith here between finely crafted silver gelatine prints, and the bulk of work I'm producing these days. So let me retrace my steps slightly.

Somewhere between 1994 and 2004, I started meandering in other directions. A Dip Ed and an MA, were two of them, computers the internet and DTP were other side interests. All the while, digital cameras are following Moore's Law, to an extent, and desktop printers are getting better and better. By 2004 I'm hooked into flickr using my Nikon Coolpix 5400, bought after travelling the world. This is the first digital camera I owned that I thought capable of producing reasonable A4 prints. It is however not the 1st I ever owned. The first I owned, had died a quiet death in Wales on the same trip, but in the interim had produced 13,000 plus images, a tiny selection of which made one of my 1st e-books, "buy, buy, buy". But I digress.

As I said 2004 and getting a flickr account, was somewhat of a turning point for me. The first few years on flickr were pretty insane, but eventually I picked up on some patterns and ideas that were not dissimilar to the real world, particularly amongst amateur photographers. For example.

• 35 mm DSLRs produce better images than point and shoot cameras
• Shallow Depth of Filed has some special magic quality about, which in turn, spawned a slather of cults/followers/groups 11,000 on flickr at time of writing
• Skin/sex sells, but I guess I knew that already but had forgotten it
• Subtlety/complexity was often overlooked
• Democracy exists in a way I'd never experienced it before [is this a unique web/forum thing?]

Anyway, I enjoyed those first few years prior to the Yahoo buyout immensely, I still do enjoy my time on flickr, but in a much more pared back kind of way. Two of the factors I enjoy about flickr, are, the amount of folks who seemed prepared to push the envelope on photography, and the interface design, particularly compared to 'deviantart' and 'fotolog'. In the beginning though it,flickr or my experience of it, was still somehow tied into the idea of a polished and finished 'object' and the stuff I'd learnt at University.

Somewhere around 2006/2007, things slowly moved in another direction. I knew it was pointless obsessing over colour as colour management is still very poorly misunderstood idea, not to mention, interfaces and browsers interfere with these factors anyway. I began wondering then, how I could add a layer of complexity to my images that was uniquely digital, how I could use flickr and the internet to exploit that? So I stopped post-processing my digital images, then began looking at other ideas.

Maps have always fascinated me. They, give some clue to your geographical location, which in turn hints at who you are, and in turn may give some clues to your culture. One thing that is unique to digital photography is, Exif Data. Digital exif data maps to the second when you made the image. The Web itself has grown to allow people many ways to geographically and visually place images into maps. These images then add data to larger databases that collectively and individually add to the greater understanding of who we are, and where we are.

Time, place, identity/memory are driving factors behind much of my output. However I'm also still am not only interested in what makes a photograph "good", but now, how I can use the simplest of tools to create images this way. ultimately the biggest change for me though is, that I carry at least one and often 2 or 3 small digital cameras everywhere, and can work at an intuitive level that I've never been able or allowed myself to work at before.[Once i've learnt how to exploit or overcome the shortcomings of each device.]

Intuition is for me the most difficult of creative processes to justify in this day and age of huge staged, or manipulated, images that adorn the halls of many Arts institutions. For me, seeing comes before speaking.

Let me finish off by, presenting one of my favourite little poems I picked up while studying at art school, it for me sums up art and photography so well;

"In modern thought, [if not in fact]
nothing is that doesn't act
So that is reckoned wisdom which
describes the scratch but not the itch"
Anon

So we've established in the beginning, I was interested in what I would call a fine print. Based on the concerns of other photographers who've gone before me. Such as Ansel Adam's Technique, and later, feebly attempting to explore the surreal and philosophical underpinnings of Frederick Sommer's ideas. The next and final question is how, do you make/get a fine print?

When one starts to get serious about your prints, it easier to produce good prints from good negs, plenty of shadow detail, not too blown out in the highlights, with hopefully a long scale of tones, [all based on a well published list of characteristics of materials]. Long scales of tone, then give you license to push them, the tones, [not the 1st year students, around in the darkroom]. Grain was a no-no, and high contrast was considered bad form, unless you had a good reason for it. Remember this is based on the ideas that the f64 group had pioneered.

This necessitated knowing your materials intimately, both film and paper. [I still use the same film today as when I started exploring materials over 20 years ago, but not the same developer or paper.] It also often meant lugging a tripod EVERYWHERE, because like good ol' Uncle Ansel, you shot at the smallest possible aperture to get the maximum amount of Depth of Field, usually on Medium Format or Large Format Cameras to help keep grain to a minimum. To keep your images sharp, you not only ALWAYS used a tripod, but a lens hood as well. Depending on your film developer combination*, even on bright sunny days, the best you sometimes could get was 1/8 a second at f22. Being a 'landscape' photographer, I never practised hand holding at low speeds, and today I still feel a little weird shooting wide open.

As a consequence you rarely photographed on a whim, and unless you are lucky enough to have a boot full of gear with you at all times,making images required a level of preparation and planning that would make trips to the Himalayas look like a picnic in the park. So; given the effort required to get your gear to the spot and with hopefully good light, you also needed to get the best neg you could, you were always trying to make sure you exposed the negative correctly, and then developed it to it's full potential, if you were developing your own black and white film. I think I'm pretty good at developing my own b&w, but when compared to the 'masters' I learnt from I've another 20 years of practice to go.

Bad negatives, and I've plenty of them, were the bane of my life, but often got fewer and further between, as I became more skilled at my craft. Ever wonder what to look for in a bad neg?

Here's a list of 'straight photography' no-no's unless the idea or the print is enhanced by it*.

• Camera Shake, not to be confused with poor/incorrect focus
• Flare
• Dust and scratches on the Negative/Print
• Poor/Incorrect focus, neg or print
• Empty blacks in a print
• Highlights with no detail, in your prints unless spectral like chrome
• Flat or Muddy tonality in your prints
• Poor tonal separation in your prints
• Chromatic Aberrations or other lens defects, in your print

The one thing bad negatives taught me, and many other people was, "How to make a good print".

So how many photographers on any of the social websites out there walk EVERYWHERE with a tripod, a medium or large format camera, have tested their materials and equipment extensively and know their place in the broader history of photography?

Well not me that's for sure. That's why I love my mobile phone and my desktop publishing software, and flickr and the web in general.

In part three, I will elaborate.

*Artists Like Joel Peter-Witkin and The Starn Twins, took this all to another level, as their work is the antithesis to these ideas, and I admire and respect these artist's work immensely.

Image credit, Calumet

*At one point in my experiments, I used a Developer called pyro, with a recipe for it, that lowered my favourite film down from 400 ISO, to 6 ISO, it gave beautiful long scale negativess, but was very tricky and messy to work with, in the end I settled for, and still use my own hand made D25.

or... Why I do what I do, the way I do it.

This is not much more than a historical backwater, where, after chatting to a photographer on flickr about film grain of all things, I felt the need to lay out my cards. So, please do not read around siesta time, or after the consumption of alcohol.

The classic way to begin these things is to ask yourself, 3 questions. What, Why, How. So here goes.

What?

Why? Well that's a bit longer and harder to answer, here goes though.

Picture this, it's 1984 or 5. I am a twenty something living and working for the weekend [as a cab driver]. After a year or so I realise this is probably not going to lead anywhere engaging. So I decide I'd best get back to school and give something a go. Also, I had recently bought a 35mm SLR camera; [duty free] and was pretty disappointed with the results. I wanted better, and some obscure part of my imagination had often looked around and 'seen' things and thought "that would make a good photograph". Some research and digging around had me apply to the 2 main Colleges that taught Photography in town. I got interviewed, but lucked out, [knowing what I now know this is no surprise]. Both recommended a folio building course, one even recommended what was then Brighton Technical School. I enrolled. It took 2 years to get a handle on my craft and produce a decent folio. Then on to University I went. Another 3 years of working on my craft, with the accompanying exploration of history and theory. Modernism was considered passé, and with Post-Modernism at it's height, it wasn't that interested in art as finely crafted objects, more ideas, or that's how I interpreted it. Nonetheless I was interested in finely crafted objects, namely photographic prints. Prints that were interesting, engaging, beautiful, irrespective of their subject matter, but above and beyond all else photographic.

While I was at art school, I'd learnt about many aspects of our rich photographic history, and the ideas that surrounded it's current state of play. One such idea was Pictorialism. In the mid to late 1800's photography was still struggling with it's identity, organisations like the Linked Ring, were busy trying to promote photography beyond it''s humble uses and into, the realm of art. In doing so, they used techniques, that involved heavy manipulation of their negatives & prints, to make them look more like paintings.

An American circle of photographers later renounced Pictorialism altogether and went on to found Group f/64, which espoused the ideal of un-manipulated, or straight photography.

Here's a list of the Photographers Wikipedia consider members:-

• Ansel Adams
• Imogen Cunningham
• John Paul Edwards
• Consuelo Kanaga
• Alma Lavenson
• Preston Holder
• Sonya Noskowiak
• Henry Swift
• Willard Van Dyke
• Brett Weston
• Edward Weston

Those of you who know me in person pre-flickr will see a pattern.

Other Photographers I was exposed to at College, were, Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Richard Misrach, to name but a few. Robert Adams, was part of a group of photographers in the 70's who had been labelled 'The New Topographers'. This was all very new and exciting for me, as I had, through a series of experiences prior to returning to College gotten, interested in 'Landscape Photography'. All these photographers still adhered to the ideas about photography, that a photograph was just that, yet, unlike Ansel Adams, their subject matter was far from sublime.

What I wanted to be sublime was the print, the silver gelatin or 'Type C' print that hung on a wall and people looked at and admired for it's inherent beauty and for the ideas it expressed, in the context of a broader photographic history.

Next; How?

I'm researching/planning a long blog entry soon, these 2 sites [photographers] will form a part of my musings.

Firstly Frederick Sommer, who I first learnt about in Art School in the late 80's

Then there's good 'ol Uncle Ansel Adams, who I probably 1st learnt about before returning to study sometime in the early to late 80's

I am very familiar with the Frederick Sommer site, but for some reason I think this was my first visit to the Ansel Adams one. Boy Oh Boy! The differences speak volumes, and from what I'd heard about Ansel Adams, perfectly fitting. Both great photographers whose contribution to the history of art photography is immeasurable, but worlds apart Philosophically.

While getting my 'back home and catching up dose of blogging' this morning, I came across, a piece by Joerg Colberg about wish lists. While I'm no fan of Holiday/New Years lists, I was quite surprised to see that we agreed on several points.

Of course we disagreed on several as well, but that's for another discussion.

On the off chance Mr Colberg reads this entry, here's my response to "truly self-published photography books", [my free e-books have been available for some time and I hope to produce another this summer]. As for his thoughts on vernacular photography, I guess my approach, doesn't have enough portraits to count as vernacular? Some food for thought, there too though, I mean what exactly is vernacular photography, and exactly what is it in the 21st Century, is there even a difference?

But the point I want to discuss here is his wish for less typologies in 2009. How serendipitous! I have been thinking about this stuff for a while too.

Over the years I've watched with amusement and fascination several 'trends' come and go in the art/photography scene here in Melbourne, I'm sure there are others who can cite more trends as my professional creative photographic practice only began in the late 80's.

In the late 80's in Melbourne, Australia, it was all about sculpture & Photography, it seemed at the time to get a show, your work had to have some sculptural component to it. Then there was the Starn Twins. Everybody seemed to be using all sorts of materials and processes to get their point across. The early 90's saw the backlash against the beginnings of digital, which to a certain extent continues today, so work was 'obviously' analogue, not unlike, Joel Peter Witkin's work.

Lately there's been a challenge by the documentarians, and the artisans, over what is is a document and what is art. The current state of play now seems to me to be large scaled works, emphasis on large, that have an element of documentary and are usually some form of typology.

What has happened to the elements of surprise and surrealism that photography seems so good at?

Frederick Sommer, my favourite artist of the 20th and so far the 21st Centuries, understood this really well. He saw the connections between, art and life so well and vividly, he understood the camera's ability to lie and misrepresent, he understood, how to pose questions gracefully elegantly and deeply.

Perhaps, post-modernism's reach still manages to stifle notions of poetry and mysticism, amongst many other things? Or perhaps a down side to the democratisation of photography by digital is that the time required to examine and contemplate is discouraged, by the process itself, and hence less thought about the 'potential' meaning of a photograph?

Santa?The Guardian Newspaper, from the UK has a flickr group, dedicated to 'interpretations' of Santa.

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"The Commons"

A couple of days ago, The NYPL, joined the commons on flickr, one of the series of images they've added is from a body of work taken by a federal employee on Ellis Island, Looking at this work, and thinking about photography in "general" and in particular flickr, has anything changed, in the last 100 or so years?