In this issue

1. My Image of the Week

2. Front end

3. On Becoming an Artist

4. The Little Camera that Did

5. Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

6. Backend/Bookends

My image of the week

Front end

Atamaarie e te whaanau (Good Morning Family):

I look forward to Saturdays.

It has become Newsletter Day, and I relish the chance to reach out and share stuff with you and maybe even be inspirational. Perhaps even be creative. Words and pictures seem to be a happy mix for me, maybe even complementary.

What is about moving house? First, there is the grind of packing out, sorting through the stuff that has been quietly accumulating and hiding away out of sight in dark, dusty corners and full-to-bursting cupboards. But, as I was doing it, I kept asking myself: What possessed me to buy that?

A spirit of brutal ruthlessness gripped me.

Nekminnit, I was filling up bags and boxes for the local hospice shop, finding willing suck discerning seekers of my rejected stuff, and generally downsizing. But nostalgia and weakness (covetedness?) meant I hung onto my kitchen and cooking stuff—cold dead fingers country. I had half a dozen banana boxes of it (no, I haven't succumbed to an air fryer or instant pot. Yet.).

Finally, all my packing came to an end, and I moved over to my new house.

However, there is worse than all that packing.

I was soooo organised to start with, and then, as the moving day came ever closer, I finished up in a mad flurry of poking possessions into any available boxes.

That should have been it.

But it wasn't.

Now I am going through cartons, wondering where I have put stuff I need and, inevitably, whatever I am looking for will be in the last box I open. #wherethef*#@is?

I am sure I am not alone in having this experience.

And, if you are sitting there smugly patting yourself on the back because you had your s*#t so together, please don't tell me.

I don't want to know.

On Becoming an Artist

As some of you know, in a previous life I used to be an art teacher.

And I did some training in art-making practice, amongst which was studying art history. That was the best part. It helped me to see what I was doing in a broader context.

Not only that, it exposed me to different artists and to what drove them to make the art they did.

I began to see what I was doing differently, to see it as part of something bigger than myself where I could play a role.

After that, I was hooked.

Not only that, it moved me into a different space, from the opportunist club/Instagram photographer, hoping to find something whenever he went out with his camera, to being a considered one, working in series, building bodies of work which evolved as they went along. I learned that good things take time and to trust in the process to develop an art-making practice unique to me.

I believe that the journey to comfortably calling yourself an artist is grounded in this awareness of, responsiveness to and acknowledgement of your being part of something bigger than yourself.

Sometimes it is good to feel you are in the company of the greats, even though you may feel you are sitting at their feet!

Whenever people ask me what the best thing they can do to move into this space is, I recommend studying the archaeology of the medium. Study the masters, learn about them, and reflect upon what they have to offer you.

Then incorporate that into the pictures you make.

Not only that, but it will enrich you as a person.

How could it not?

Below in the Fevered Mind Links is one to MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York and their courses.

The Little Camera that Did

I guess many of you have one of these lurking away in a corner somewhere.

Of all the cameras released in the last 120 years, this has to be one of the most important.

Yes, really.

When it was first released in 1900 by Kodak (remember them?) for the princely sum of US$1, it took off.

For the first time in human history, the Great Unwashed could make likenesses of each other and their lives. No more hiring a professional to do it. Instead, over the years, Eastman Kodak made and sold millions of them.

Kodak was primarily a film company. They aimed to sell film printmaking products- as much as possible. So they made it as easy as possible. You could take your camera and finished film to your local shop, have it taken out and replaced and then return later for the finished prints.

It was a wild success, and Kodak went on to become one of the most influential photographic companies in the world.

Have you ever thought about the phrase " take photos" and where it originated? Most of us all use it without thinking.

Kodak's slogan was " you press the button; we do the rest."

Later that became, " you take the picture; we do the rest."

So photography became an act of acquisition, a form of consumerism.

Art critic, the late Susan Sontag, puts it this way:

Is that what we truly want to do?

I suspect not.

Most of us think of what we are doing as creative.

Or would like to.

So here is the thing. It involves a simple word replacement.

Use the word "make".

And realise you don't take anything.

You make a photograph.

Photography is in no way an objective process.

It never has been and never will.

It is entirely subjective.

You make choices (camera, lens, aperture et al.). Then, you choose where to stand and when to make the exposure.

It is an act of conscious fabrication.

Try changing out the word, and you may find you begin to make pictures in a new way.

In a new, more considered and conscious way.

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

Why so many of us are casual spider-murderers — www.bbc.com

As I opened the front door, I mentally prepared myself for the obstacle course ahead. First I needed to fetch something from the shed – the domain of monstrous spiders the size of baby mice, who lurk in corners with just their furry, gangling legs protruding.

Online courses — www.moma.org

Immerse yourself in ideas and see your world in new ways through art.

Rilke on the Lonely Patience of Creative Work

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