Tom Reaume, photography on

This is one of my pure abstract photographs, Without yellow there is no god, 2008 created with a camera but without using Photoshop. It is not a close up image like those from Aaron Siskind and his followers.

My vision rises to the bare tree tops where distal twigs and buds evaporate like mist into the sky. Here the thin lines against the distant gray sky become too faint and airy for a grounded clarity to take hold. The twigs disappear, not abruptly like the top of a truncated building, but in jazzy botanical patterns with gaps and giggles, slashes and strokes. Here is my rich reference, for here the slightest breeze induces a lunar movement. This is where my hands are free to wander playfully with a camera along the edge of these two magical worlds. Up there I can forget the thick reality of tree trunks by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, and the thicker, hard buildings of Hilla and Bernd Becher. I close my eyes and begin to see Jackson Pollock's Gray and Red.

Jeff Wall & Tate Modern

The above photograph is my A rant of pink, 2008 created with a camera. 

Jeff Wall is a still photographer sought after by collectors and museums. In the Tate Modern collecton is his, A Sapling Held by a Post, 2000. This baffles me. This simple photograph is the equivalent of practicing scales on a piano. It can be viewed at http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/.

His style is very photographic with the drab colors of spring. The picture is without a horizon, not even a corner of sky to relieve the monotony of the brownish image. The angle of vision is ordinary, as is his color palette. Shading is minimal, giving almost no relief to the flat images within his flat photograph.

This snapshot is something you might find in a parks manual on how to tie a sapling to a post to give it the support it needs to survive the weather. Does the noticeable white tie between the sapling and pole represent the Doctoral halo above Wall's head? Is there some hidden art history involved with this ordinary image? Is this the difinitive tree photograph? Now that Wall has taken it, can the photography community stop taking tree pictures, or will this produce a generation of copycats.

His image is the perfect example that the grain has been thrown out and the chaff is collected by some very modern museums of art. When the Tate Modern has its annual, 8 days of humor in art, Jeff Wall's sapling photo will rank among the best.

Does this photo represent love? Two people are held together by a tender white bond where the smallest details are not lost. Both the pole and sapling will outgrow each other and the unchanging pole will soon be in awe of the might oak it once held erect.

Is this an environmental snapshot to remind us of our humble start and how we must grow into our slot in society, using up nutrients, and eventually reaching our full potential if given enough early support?

Is it an image after but well before the aspen images by Ansel Adams?

May the curators at the Tate Modern return to art history 101 and practice singing, the art goes up the hill. Even upside down the sapling photo is empty. Long live the Tate and Jeff Wall.

Martha Hanna, CMCP, her 2003 book

Above is another of my pure abstract photos, New Leaves, 2008.

Martha Hanna, for those of you living outside of Ottawa, ON, is the ultra-conservative director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. http://www.cmcp.gallery.ca Back in 2003 she put on a show, A Confluence of Contemporary Canadian Photography, with the help of staff at the National Gallery of Canada,  A 74-page catalog of still photographs came with the show. Still photography is Martha Hanna's favorite style for the medium. 

Marth Hanna should have used Conformity instead of Confluence in the title.


In case we don't know, Martha Hanna explains what a good still photograph entails. "The introduction of photography into the fine print collections of art galleries emphasized the detail, quality, and resolution of the photographic print." And "The scrap yard and oil refinery photographs [of Edward Burtynsky] of the 1990s have become increasingly more clear and vivid through the enhanced possibilities of technological control and fine papers." Lastly, "It's facility for registering a likeness, its reference to the real, its indexical nature are inherent attributes of the medium [of photography]."


"Inherent attributes" my ass. This is why directors of institutions, especially those dealing with photography, are only mildly believable. They promote their personal taste and think they are doing the world and the medium a favor. They are not. 

Martha Hanna's book reminds me of a drive I once took along a highway cut through deciduous woodland. The trees obscured the distant horizon. Then a yellow sign moving toward me indicated I was entering a stretch of highway where White-tailed Deer frequently cross. I snapped to a more alert state, hoping to secure a vision of tan movement along the treed edge of the road. The kms passed and no deer was seen. Like Marth Hanna's book, the really good stuff, the moving deer, the great photos, are obscured by the trees, the still photographs, and I am left wondering why she continues to trivialize the medium of photography and not  give it the full democratic freedom of expression it deserves. There are no deer in her book. The trees, her narrow choice of still pictures, obscure the real possiblities. 

Aperture portfolio prize winner

Aperture in New York has the 2008 winners of their latest portfolio contest on their website at www.aperture.org/apertureprize/ The winner, Michael Corridore, an Australian, shows people bathed in dust while watching sporting events such as car racing. Dusty indeed. 
    The reddish picture above is one of my pure abstractions titled, After the storm. Now back to Michael's images.
     His winning picture is default photography-- a girl in focus and situated at the bottom of the frame and near the middle. Generally we are looking at dust which is not that exciting although the cult. judges describe his image a minimalistic because of the dust. The picture might have been more interesting printed up side down just to add variety. But Michael went to the Photography Studies College and certainly knows which way is up.
      His picture maintains the normal paradigm for snapshot photography. The dust is interesting but a portfolio of dust is, well dusty, and hopefully not a trend setting style. 
     I am not sure why it won. It is a clear signal to keep taking snapshots. Dead souls like John Szarkowsky would be proud of  Aperture's choice. 
   This image, group of images, tells us the folks in New York City don't really demand very much from the medium. A "different" subject matter is all it takes; but don't change the style. 
     Sleep peacefully New York and practice the piano.