Blog About Photography

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My good friend Chester posted this to Culture Warrior the other day. Naturally, I thought of you.

On a day that has taken both Ingmar Bergman and Tom Snyder from us, I want to make note of the passing of Marvin Zindler, a commentator on ABC 13 Eyewitness News in Houston, TX. Regularly contributing to the newscast since 1973, Zindler was a local personality rivaled in ubiquity only by Furniture tycoon Mattress Max. Zindler’s crusading weekly report “Slime in the Ice Machine,” had such credibility as to decided the fate of dining establishments who failed to ensure they were up to snuff. Zindler was certainly feared by some, by respected - nay - adored, by most. The vacuum he leaves in Houston’s broadcasting community is undeniable but he will continue to live on in our hearts and, of course, in our ice machines.

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© Christian Patterson

Another post about my favorite subject: me. I’m awfully sorry about this. Amy Stein wrote a great post a couple of months back about how the readership of her blog expanded so much when she stopped writing so much about herself and more about photography. I hope to soon follow her example, but apparently not today. An entry over at Conscientious just got me thinking about how I define myself. Joerg said:

A couple of days ago, Ed Winkleman posted about a scientist who produces beautiful images, but who refuses to consider herself an artist. As always at his blog, the discussion that followed is quite interesting. Needless to say, part of my interest stems from the fact that in my day job I am a scientist myself, and I keep running into people who just can’t comprehend how a scientist would know something about photography. So when people ask me what I “do”, I’m always a bit of a loss what to say, since I don’t want to define myself through any single activity.

I sort of feel the same way as Joerg does and I too often have trouble answering this question. Clearly, photography is a serious pursuit of mine; but I’m also finishing a degree in political science. As we finished out senior year, we were all asking each other what our plans were. Acquaintences were surprised to hear I’m planning on an artistic career instead of a political one, “wow, that’s a big a change,” etc. And since I’m not trying to get a job covering politics as a photojournalist for the Washington Post, I guess it would seem that my passions of mine are unrelated.

To me, of course, political and social, critical writing and photography are not at all unrelated and each are tools I can use to put forth a cohesive view of American culture. My work is not inherently political because often times I find art with too heavy-handed a message off-putting. We live in an era where we let viewers interpret what we make for themselves so I by no means want to advance any kind of agenda or anything like that. But I am looking to bring all the things I do together and put forth complementary projects of all kinds encouraging, and hopefully stimulating, critical thought.

I’m an aspiring pointer-outer-of-things.

Once a year, the New Yorker descends into self-parody in order to sell expensive real estate to high-end advertisers and bump up issue sales. They call this the style issue, and I carried it around for a week befor I even opened it and man oh man is it a waste of time. They confront such complex problems as counterfeit handbags and where to shop in Dallas, TX while throwing in a couple of extra reviews of art and architecture. Not even the first 30 or so pages are free of commercial blight; music critic Sasha Fere-Jones pens a few words for ‘critic’s notebook’ reviewing the viral marketing campaign for the forthcoming Nine Inch Nails album, which he refers to as an artform.

I don’t mean to be closed minded here. My art is all about scavenging the pop culture wasteland, presenting what I find quth a mixture of reverence and disgust - that’s what I do. But where’s the disgust?

I will say though that whenever the New Yorker does a double issue, they run some pretty hilarious cartoons.