wow.  this was easier than i thought it would be.  i probably have another couple of blog entries i could have written.  i feel totally remiss in not having said anything about lillian bassman, wong kar wai, the brothers quay, uta barth or julia margaret cameron.  perhaps another time.  to those who've lent me the time and the space to open my head up a little bit in this forum, i thank you.  and to those who've taken the time to look, and respond, you make it all worthwhile.  bless you

- aeric 

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a couple more shout outs before i'm out of here.

there is art that inspires.  and then there's art that actually changes you.  the work of gerhard richter falls into the latter category.  i've been a different artist since the day my mind was irreparably blown upon first seeing one of his paintings.  and then it got blown again when i saw another one.  and it keeps going like that with each new encounter with his work.  it's exhausting.  i don't even know where to begin to articulate the many ways i love what he does - how he moves me, turns me inside out, drives me to be better.  so energetic, monumental, playful, perverse, flawlessly executed, fearlessly excessive, heartbreakingly gorgeous … fuck.  gerhard richter rocks so fucking hard i can't stand it.

and what can i say about man ray?  to my mind, he is the king of photography.  the absolute king.

-aeric 

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for a long time i accepted the common idea that it was important to develop a style or specialty - some kind of narrowly defined signature which would identify your work as "yours".  i was a nudes and portraits guy and hardly ever took a picture of anything outside of that.  when my daughter was around four or five, my wife and i started giving her disposable cameras to play with, and the pictures she made totally shook up my orientation to subject matter.  because the only thing she understood about photography was the gesture of putting the camera up to your face and pressing the button, and that she was only three feet tall, the photos were so weird.  no sense at all of composition, framing, timing, lighting, or even what the lens could see or not see.  actually, she didn't even comprehend "lens" or "viewfinder" or any of that. there was only "ooh, take a picture of that!" raise the camera and click - even if the subject is only two inches or 100 feet away.  very few of them were truly great, but i saw so many bizarre, formally shocking and beautiful images there that i was inspired to take a much looser approach to what i regarded as an interesting thing to photograph.  my notions about what "photographer aeric" wanted to photograph exploded at that point and my eye perceived all kinds of interesting possibilities that it hadn't before.  this also altered my relationship to technique and i began to allow for the possibility of interesting mistakes to enter into my process.  the whole experience changed my work a lot.  i kept all of her photos and learned something else which was really valuable.  i could see how through judicious selection a real "photographer" could be made out of this pile of fucked up toddler shots.  i became clear how much point of view, vantage point, and most importantly, editing are just as important for establishing the "content" of ones work as what's in front of the camera.

she has no idea about any of this, by the way. she's almost 14 now and is turning out to be a pretty good real photographer in her own right.  i'll wait until she matures a bit more as an artist before i tell her what a big impact her early work had on her dad.

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the many ways in which i've been inspired by gilles berquet are beyond obvious.  his dark, theatrical, dreamworld lighting struck a chord with me from the moment i saw it.  as someone with no background in studio lighting techniques, it took me a long time (longer than it should have in the internet age) to unravel what he was up to.  and of course, his subject matter…wow.  initially, i admit, it was disturbing and kinda freaked me out (yeah, i know, right?).  but ultimately liberating.

 

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you never really know how a camera works until you learn how to use a view camera.  that's my experience anyway.  after shooting with one and then printing (back in the darkroom days) from a 4x5 inch negative, the relationship to my 35mm was history.  because of thrill of large negatives, as well as the stimulating challenge of trying to make loose, spontaneous pictures with a device designed for slow, deliberate meticulousness, for years i did the vast majority of my work with a 4x5. becoming familiar with it completely rearranged the way my brain processed the construction of the photographic image, and it was during this time that i had my first dreams about taking pictures.  really vivid and intense dreams too.  eventually, the practical necessity for using a smaller, hand held camera reasserted itself, and i started working with a medium format - and then on to digital from there.  but i sorely miss the challenge of shooting with the big, unwieldy, slow, pain in the ass of a camera.

-aeric 

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i can't remember exactly when i first fell in love with barnett newman's paintings, but when it hit me, it hit me hard.  i can get lost in his pictures for hours and hours.  there's just something about a strong vertical line that just lights me up inside.  i can't begin to understand why that is, but it's one of my most persistent fetishes.

yellow painting - 1949, oil on canvas

covenant - 1949, oil on canvas 

mitternacht blau - 1970, oil, acrylic on canvas

untitled - 1969, ink on paper

-aeric 

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photographing musicians at work is something i try to do as often as possible.  it's likely that my love of roy decarava has something to do with this.  but on a more fundamental level, music forms a subcategory of "people in states of extreme activity" - a subject that i'm intensely drawn to.  my interest in dance comes from that and my interest in sex as well.  they're all kind of similar to me.  i love to meditate on the phenomenon of how doing something intensely physical can lead to the experience of feeling very removed from the body and into closer communion with the spirit.  it's a thrilling paradox.  i haven't gotten around to shooting much of it yet, but sports also falls into this realm.  i'm not a very sporty person so access to athletes isn't organic to my life.  i'll have to go bit out of my way for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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