If someone makes a picture, the (stated)INTENT of which is along the lines of ” a powerful and telling conceptual and visual metaphor (with both comic and tragic-sinister overtones) for our gas-guzzling hyper-individualized American society of consumers wedded to their cars and addicted to the gas pump as the major means of manifesting their all-important precious and unique ’selves’ which turn out to be mechanical clones of the other ’selves’ around them.”
and then lets say viewer A views it without knowing this and has this reaction to it
“something else. Something distant, sealed-off from the chaos. Something still, peaceful, quiet, permanent, safe, and simple. Something different from, yet consistent with reality.”

The Question is [actually its a whole bunch of them, ho hum.]
WHICH ONE IS RIGHT?
ARE EITHER OF THEM RIGHT?
OR BOTH RIGHT?
OR WRONG?
AND DOES IT MATTER?

just a thought to stave off Hotel room boredom waiting for the rain to stop. No bigee.

Peace
John

lots of comments, perhaps looking for the point since it is a less easy piece to read than many..

There is the conundrum, It’s not really my cup of tea and yet it stirs emotions so therefor it is effective at communicating a message. So your work as an artist is achieving it’s goals.

I have had a look through your website, i love the style of work you are doing and it has helped to clarify my thoughts on what you are saying, you seem to have a clear style and vision. I can see that doing the wedding and offspring photography might allow you to practice your craft and might provide an income but to me it seems a distraction from your real skills. You have a very cutting and astute eye and is very considered.

I don’t know if you already do but you deserve to be working full time as a photographic artist.

I agree with you, David is doing a great thing here, it is also helping me realise some dreams for myself after 20 years in the industry working at commercial photography, that personal projects are important. I have cabinets full of half started/finished personal projects that need to be completed rather than just relying on the next commission. This type of personal expression is essential to the artistic photographer.

Adam you said in your post above that you “always learned more from listening to others than from talking” well i think your photography is shouting out load and telling us an awfull lot.

Cheers

Ian

You all have gotten me thinking a lot about the importance of intent. I think there should be honesty to the intent of one’s work that can only come from doing the hard work of continually examining one’s motives and connecting with the emotional core of the work. This can only make the work more genuine. I also think it’s this genuineness that can set work it apart from being simply a master study of sorts.

But what I’m not quite sure of whether or not to articulate that intent, or just let the work speak for itself. I like to think that the meaning is communal – that the viewer brings as much to the work as the artist.

Plus I don’t want to come across as self-indulgent.

But what the hell… I feel like I’ve been asked, so here’s what’s in it for me.

I’m a fortunate guy. I am happy. My life is filled with the love and companionship of close family and friends. This closeness is a blessing, and a source of strength, but it’s also terrifying. I’m constantly reminded of the potential for random chaos that can change it, can take it all away in an instant. I know that someday the proverbial wolf will be at the door. Little pig, little pig, let me come in. And he’ll blow down the house.

One way I deal with this fear is to mentally disconnect with my environment. Through photography I’ll visually rearrange my surroundings so they become something else. Something distant, sealed-off from the chaos. Something still, peaceful, quiet, permanent, safe, and simple.

Something different from, yet consistent with reality.

I draw a great comfort from the process of making these photographs and from the photographs themselves. I guess it’s a refuge of sorts. These photographs are what is ultimately my futile attempt to keep it all at bay.

So, Thanks to everyone else for taking the time to look at my photograph, consider it, and share your thoughts with me. Your comments have been very encouraging and insightful…I’ve gotten something out of each one. I’ve always learned more from listening to others than from talking, and this is no exception.

And lastly, David, thanks for posting this. Perhaps, as some have suggested, you posted this photograph just to stir things up. Don’t know if that’s the case or not, but you certainly did for me, and for that I thank you.

Man, I dig what you’ve been sayin’! Especially this: “…and third as a powerful and telling conceptual and visual metaphor (with both comic and tragic-sinister overtones) for our gas-guzzling hyper-individualized American society of consumers wedded to their cars and addicted to the gas pump as the major means of manifesting their all-important precious and unique ’selves’ which turn out to be mechanical clones of the other ’selves’ around them.”

It is quite similar to what I felt when I first saw the photo, but since there is no way I could express it as eloquently, I’ll leave your comment to speak for me! Thanks.

And Adam… nice.

Personally, I like this picture. It takes something so utterly banal as a petrol station and presents it to us anew. It actually makes something, which would ordinarily seem ugly, quite attractive. It certainly looks a lot nicer than many petrol stations I’ve been to. But then it also comments on our dependance on petrol. The fact that something like this can be so “invisible” through our matter of fact use, speaks volumes about our thirst for fuel. I like the big SELF on the pumps to…. how many measure their self worth through status symbols such as cars. I find it striking that the place is so very clean, clinical almost; given that what it provides is so poisonous. Perhaps thats an effort by the company to represent itself as cleaner, therefore, less polluting.

What i don’t quite follow is the controversy it seems to have caused. Why is it so bold a choice? Why are so many getting so hot under the collar?

Jason.

I respond to this photo on at least three levels simultaneously: First, as a nicely composed still life photo, second as a document of what geographers call the ‘cultural landscape’, and third as a powerful and telling conceptual and visual metaphor (with both comic and tragic-sinister overtones) for our gas-guzzling hyper-individualized American society of consumers wedded to their cars and addicted to the gas pump as the major means of manifesting their all-important precious and unique ‘selves’ which turn out to be mechanical clones of the other ‘selves’ around them. Now, I don’t know Adam from Adam, and he hasn’t explained himself in this forum yet, so I have no way of knowing if any or all of this was on his mind either when he took the photo or when he submitted it to BURN (Adam???). And ditto for DAH when he chose to post it (though he must have had his reasons, I suspect).

As a still life, I find the composition pleasing, clean, well balanced. It is true that there is little visual tension in it… those who prefer or demand visual tension in photos will probably not respond positively… but human life, unlike American TV, is not always in a state of frenetic motion, there is often repose, stasis, solidity… thank god, and some people, of whom I’m one, may feel there’s as much need for dignified repose in both life, and photos, as there is for dynamic tension. The open, bright, partly sunny light of late morning or late afternoon may seem banal or stark at first… it is not ‘dramatic’ light or moody in a conventional photographic sense, but in fact creates its own mood that emphasizes the ‘conventionality’ or ‘normalcy’, the everyday quality of the scene… I think someone else mentioned that this actually contributes to it becoming more surreal, and I agree. I like the blue and white and light gray palette… some people may not. For this particular photo, I think it works well and is highly appropriate.

As document of the ‘cultural landscape’ it is an accurate recording of something common and important in the everyday fabric of American life at present… but who knows for how long? Yes, some other photographers have chosen to photograph similar scenes (and Adam Smith himself has such photos in his “Sense of Place” series)… so that part is not so original, but in ‘seeing’ it and photographing it, Adam has placed it before our eyes for consideration when most people might have overlooked it as unworthy of consideration, and my long and deeply felt view is that the more we actually see and contemplate what is actually around us, instead of ignoring it, the better. Some other photographers or painters have already done something along these lines, sure… but I think it’s still a worthwhile thing to do and I think this photo does it quite well. What is possibly odd is just how ‘clean’ the image is, as some people have commented, and how that lends an odd, unsettling, somewhat unnatural feel to the superficially ‘normal’ scene… Velibor, above, has written with pithy insight about this.

But what really grabbed me immediately, and launched a rocket in my imagination was, surprise, surprise… the word “Self” so significantly and prominently displayed on each pump… not “Self Service” but just “Self”… and that sent reverberations of meaning rippling through my mind, tying together the industrial/suburban landscape of roads and gas stations, the dispensing of gas, the worship of ‘self’ as autonomous individual that dominates American culture, and its most prominent and ultimately ‘self-destructive’ manifestation, everybody’s need to drive their own car everywhere, to consume gas, to spend so much of their lives in an armored metal box that separates them from everyone else on the road who is actually doing the same thing, living the same life, in the illusion of separateness… I could go on and fill in many more dots, but I’m sure you catch my drift. Now, some of you may regard this as quite a stretch, or attribute it to my own peculiar concerns, and maybe you are right. There isn’t any ‘correct’ reading of any photo. But all of the above hit me within a second or two of first seeing this photo… it wasn’t the result of long contemplation, although to sort it out so I could write about it in a logical fashion took some time. I looked at the other photos in Adam’s “Sense of Place” series, and while they are similar, none of the others grabbed me as much or reverberated on as many levels as this one.

I can’t resist one last personal editorial comment here… I have been accused occasionally by DAH and maybe some others as being too ‘literal’ in my photographic tastes… maybe they are right, but I’ve noticed often that what seems to be ‘literal’ photographically may in fact encode all kinds of surreal, metaphoric, and symbolic content if we just look at it in a different light. Is that too subtle? Too Zen? With some of the photos that appear on BURN, I have to look several times, come back to it, read the artist’s statement or the comments before I ‘get’ a whole lot… and I don’t object to that, that’s why I’m here, to try to learn something. But with this photo there was no struggle, I ‘got’ it at first glance. What I ‘got’ was probably not what anyone else ‘got’, but my dismay was caused by what seemed to be the off-hand rejection by several responders that there was ‘nothing there’.

I’d love to hear something from Adam…?? Or DAH…??

That is very interesting and well put, I think.

I really appreciate your taking ‘another stab’ at articulating thoughtfully your responses to this photo, which you do quite well, and let me apologize to you personally for sounding condescending. Of course, you are not ignorant… and I would never suggest that you should ‘like’ this photo if you don’t. Thanks for the explanation.

Cheers,

Mike.

The terrifying effects that absence could create were wonderfully described in the W.G. Sebald’s story about another great author Vladimir Nabokov in his essay “Dream Textures, A Brief note of Nabokov”: “At the very beginning of Nabokov’s autobiography, programmatically entitled Speak, Memory there is the story of a man who, we must assume, is still very young, and who suffers a panic attack when he first sees a home movie shot in his parent’s house a few weeks before his birth. All the images trembling on the screen are familiar to him, he recognizes everything, everything is right except for the fact, which disturbs him deeply, that he himself is not where he has always been, and the other people in the house do not seem to mourn his absence.”

Wonderful, isn’t it?
Best to you all,
Veba

If we were playing poker, I’d call. Show us your cards Sydney!

Asher

However, your comments really just reveal how lacking in awareness you are, “I won’t go into all the stuff about what the photo says to me personally.”…. It’s much easier to sit back and wait to criticize others intellectual processes, then try to come across as a higher thinker. I pity you.

Asher

i always try to give everyone the “benefit of the doubt”….cut everyone a lot of slack…assume good, unless i see bad….and i do thank you for at least not being anonymous..

and for that reason i went to your site…but tell me, tell me, where are you coming from?? i expected some sort of enlightened site, some powerful work , some alternative vision to our “stupid slideshows”….hmmmmm, well i did not open every photographer on your blog , but i did look at about 6…so , i am at a loss as to your “level of understanding” shall we way….however, i will give you even more benefit of the doubt and go back and look again…

over time i have gotten to know many of the world’s so called greats…i see lot’s of powerful student work, and in general pretty much know the varied personalities of really fine photographers of all styles and types of all ages and temperament …NOBODY, icon, or emerging photographer, with a real sense of self would make a classless insulting comment like yours…

i always wonder about photographers who seem so bitter..and they really come out on the web…amazing…i am not a “shrink” , but i assume always the bitter ones have been rejected by somebody…feel themselves “failed”…as i said, nobody with any kind of self worth would make a comment as you did…to flagrantly insult absolutely everyone here with a perverse arrogance….yes yes criticism we want…and intelligent thought in opposition is why we are here, so do not misunderstand my missive to you please…

maybe i have you wrong Sebastian…and maybe you will end up as one of the greatest photographers of all time…if so, i will kiss the floor you walk on….

but, what you have shown so far is: (a) no pictures of your own as a counter point (b) one very stupid comment

My sinking into ‘lurk mode’ after our phone conversation was coincidental, necessitated entirely by local circumstances, and had nothing to do with any negative feelings arising from what was for me a delightful exchange. Incidentally, I am still hoping you will make it out to the Pacific Northwest, as are Tom Hyde, Katia, and probably any number of other people… any chance of this coming true in the near to medium future?

Cheers,

yes, i have missed you too and always thought you to be one of our better analysts albeit pretty tough on the “non literal”..but that is just fine…we always need differing opinion…

in any case, i really enjoyed our phone chat a few weeks ago and you disappeared right after that, so i thought i must have said something wrong…i remembered it as a very pleasant conversation, so i was quite confused…

welcome back amigo…

cheers, david

Patricia