this isn’t important work, it’s colourful pinholes,i doubt it’s going to change anyone’s life.
i try to make pictures i like, that mean something to me, if others find something in them that they can relate to then that’s great but selfishly i’m not considering anyone else whilst i make them, unless others are involved.

photography is a challenge to me, not because i’m trying to pass on a message or impress anyone, but because i want to see how close i can get to what i feel.
i don’t need to make public the ‘brutal honesty’ you’d like (though you may find more of what you feel is missing here in my flickr stream)…..these are me experimenting on myself…….i don’t feel the need to expose everything to everyone but i do understand what you’re after, you’ll just need to look somewhere else for it….i generally prefer my honesty mixed with kindness, whether it’s pinholes or portraits.

So maybe slightly unfair to expect your own definition of “honest” when judging someone elses work?

i am going to go quite a bit against the grain here and, um, tell you that i wish for a bit more honesty in these. i am not opposed to blur, out of focus or really any other mechanism used to produce artistic photography. In fact, i have always held smudgy, indistinct and undefined photos rather close to my heart (as in Antoine D Ágata, for example) But, but…blurry and indistinct photos do not preclude telling the truth and it seems to me you are afraid of the brutal honesty of the lens. And that truth is therefore denied to your viewer.

As an example of brutal truth in self-portraits i think of Patricia Lay-Dorsey. Her work places us squarely in the mirror of self-revelation with her. Whether it took guts, narcicissm, an altruistic need to tell the story of someone like herself so that we might know and understand, or all of the above, the bottom line is that the result is stop-the-breath-honest. Not stuff i´d hang on my wall but important work that i believe should be required viewing, especially by the young who think those mile-long legs last forever. Patricia took her insides and outsides, splayed them out like a chicken filet and clicked the shutter. You explored a medium, a technique using your own body and the effect is pretty, graphic in a pop art sort of way, fuzzy in an impressionistic painting sort of way, hidden like a dance of the seven veils kind of way, but never even close to honest. So i ask, why? I learn nothing about you from these self-portraits. I just see pleasing blobs of color and shape. And really, i think you could have achieved both beauty and honesty had you just been more courageous. You give me an itch i cannot scratch.

I agree with Erica that these would look amazing printed huge with richly saturated colors and hung on blazingly white walls with great light. But that would not make this work any more important to me than the way i see them here. I wish, wish, wish that i could see some of those ¨mistakes¨ you mention. I will bet that what you lump in the word mistake is a graphic reality that you are not willing to share with the world.

Best

Kathleen

bob, that’s great…powerful work you’ve got there (love the soundtrack) , I’m going to go through it again when I’m not snatching at time.

mtomalty, i get what you mean about sophisticated….i go from liking muted colours to luminescent greens, I need to learn how to rein myself in.

mike, you’re always so kind to me and i’ve always really appreciated your support…i still have the first email you sent me tucked away somewhere because i was so thrilled you liked what i was doing.
thank you again!

gordon, i feel very flattered :) thank you.
i need the variety that the pinholes and the portraits give me….it’s people i’m always studying and wanting to photograph but the looseness and solitariness of doing these is a good balance….i’m lucky i don’t have to choose.

Congratulations on your series.

Your site is actually on one of my photographer site bookmarks. I love a lot of the work there. Love the greenhouse series especially.

This stuff is nice, although it is not my favourite thing of yours. Heavily blurred images such as these are appealing for a short time, but dont really have enough meat to sink your teeth into, visually speaking of course :))

Congratulations! I’ve loved your work for many years and am happy to see you gaining a wider audience.

You bring great sensitivity and thoughtfulness to all of your projects. The compelling virtue of this project is that you’ve taken what could be a technique that overwhelms the image into images that are completely transcendent on both emotional and conceptual levels.

As always, your work is compelling and meaningful.

Mike

Very nice series but, geez, you gotta get that lens looked at. Something ain’t right :>))

Seriously, I enjoyed the series but found my personal preference was for those,in the series,
with more pastel, muted tones-3,9,10,18,and 21. Somehow they seemed more ’sophisticated.

Those with the louder colors-,7,14,and 20, just didn’t work as well for me

i’ve published work around and one of the rare photographers who doesnt have/want a website….as to my work…working on a book…have exhibited in n.american and asia and published…some of the stuff can be found on the web and David and Burn graciously published a short story i did (3 week shoot) on memory/my dad-son/ made specifically for Myson/my dad and David dad and Burn etc called ‘bones of time’…it’s in the archives here..published during the 1st 6 months of Burn, most readers now probably have no idea about that essay..or my work since i dont use links…that’s cool with me :)))…i prefer here to celebrate others than to toot my own horn :))

on 1 april, i will have a new essay published elsewhere too, so you’ll have to wait for that announcement…and that i’ll be sending david/anton something after that that’s i’ve been working on for burn specifically for last year, post-bones…

but, there are some pics and information here

http://www.lightstalkers.org/bobblack

cheers
bob

you may prefer this recent one..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/janeway/4372786447/

ian, these are all digital, i hope to try with film one day though.

thanks, mimmi :)

emcd, i used a ready made pinhole cap on a D90. for a while that made it almost seem like it was less genuine because i’m so film based but i’m okay with that now.
and yes, dye transfer, sounds yummy.

vivek, good :)

frank, thanks, and like most people i don’t like being told what shapes are ideal but it can be hard to ignore so i guess this is about acceptance too.

tommy, i hadn’t thought that i could make it much shorter. somehow i was thinking i had to show bits of it all and that there was an accepted number in an essay/series/selection, but of course there isn’t.
i’ll remember that if i ever need to put something together again, thank you.

patricia, you’re lovely!
that’s just what i want, for it to be universal, for there to be recognition for the viewer, i guess that’s what i look for with other’s art, to understand more.
thanks very much.

(book? yes please :)

bob, thanks for the link, it’s always good to see someone elses way of approaching it.
(do you have a link to yours also?)

jordan, thank you!

:)) @ panos.

thanks gustav, i feel very honoured to be here!

///Gustav

sorry…Vicky..im in a good mood , once again..all of a sudden..
big hug

these are absolutely stunning! the color, the form, the painterly quality of them…i wanna just keep on looking at these… i would love to see what they look like as prints…huge prints!

thanks for showing!

thanks for the link to your outoffocus shots…yes, love them alot…and i also incorporate some out of vocus stuff and pinhole pics too….you might be interested in having a look at the work of a photographer i know here in toronto, who works with historical locations/moments of history, out of focus

p. elaine sharpe

http://www.pelainesharpe.com/

the website is incomplete…but u get the idea…

cheers
bob

Patricia
—————————————
i second Pat…i want one too..:)