28 x 28: February Nineteen

"They weren't pictures of people. They were pictures of the way I felt." -- Ted Croner

Sometimes life throws such oddly resonant and serendipitous moments at you that you don't even see them coming. Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the Milwaukee Art Museum's Street Seen exhibit. This was a special event with (loud) music, drinks, food, and various other activities throughout the art museum. It's a regular event called MAM: After Dark. To say the least, it was a fairly schizophrenic affair filled with tons of people and not a particularly clear notion on what it was one should be doing. From an interesting if not bizarre interpretive dance group to craft tables with no discernible purpose, one wouldn't be blamed for finding it hard to find the tone of the night. The sheer amount of people present in a relatively small space and the fact that we arrived slightly later to the venue than normal only exacerbated the calamity. Of course, if one were to just relax and take a step back, it's quite easy to see that the most logical thing to do in an art museum is view art. This was my first visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum, so I was not entirely sure what to expect in terms of what I would see. Part of me has always assumed that art museums are just places where oddities and simplistic renderings get passed off for a lot more than they actually happen to be. I tried my best to keep this notion in check as we decided to see the centerpiece attraction for tonight's event: Street Seen.

Street Seen is a collection of photographs from six different photographers showcasing various pieces demonstrating city life and culture during the years following the Second World War. Photography is one of those art forms that I find it hard to denote any one photograph as art. By dint of what it is, I feel like the classification of such work falls squarely into a subjective category. Regardless, I viewed the exhibit with as open a mind as I am able, and I must say I was quite taken aback. While every four or five pictures simply seemed to me to be pleasant accidents touted as much more, there were some every now and then that struck me as simply amazing. I suppose I should clarify that 'pleasant accident' can both be a good thing and a bad thing. Photography is capturing a moment the way you're seeing or experiencing it, and because moments are fleeting most of the best pictures that will ever be captured will be accidental. The very same photos I was so astonished by were most likely also completely random; a cosmic conflux of elements all coming together at once with a lucky human being aware enough to snap a shutter at the right moment. Happy enough to be wrong about the content of an art museum (for the most part), I plodded along silently critiquing or envying each photo until I came upon the works of one Ted Croner.

The photographs of Ted Croner and the accompanying information about the photographer gripped me in a way I had not expected -- which is to say this is the resonance and serendipity I was speaking about at the beginning of this writing. Ted Croner, upon returning from the War, dedicated himself to being a photographer and took up shop in the heart of the country; New York City. Enrolled at a famous photography institute of the time (a name which escapes me at the moment), it wasn't until one night when Croner borrowed a specific camera (twin reflex, I think) and set out to take a few shots at a diner that he discovered his photographic 'voice'. Upon this discovery Croner commented that he wasn't just capturing people doing things, he was capturing how he felt. I've quoted the exact line at the top of this posting, but those of you who have read this blog for some amount of time may remember that my own view of the world and taking pictures of it is something freakishly similar to Ted Croner. It wasn't until I further discovered that the photographer also relished the post production aspects of his craft that I was very nearly floored. Apparently Croner was a huge fan of experimental manipulation techniques during the development of his work. Altering shadow darkness, exposing negatives longer, double printing negative on the same sheet -- Ted Croner was essentially doing exactly what I was DECADES before I ever thought of the idea. Needless to say, his photographs were the absolute highlight of the entire night for me. Here was a person who not only lived in an era that I personally find exponentially more visually entertaining, but he was much more skillfully and confidently capturing images that I so far only dream to aspire to.

I suppose the point of all of this rambling on and on about finding a kindred spirit in a medium I am growing progressively more fond of is that sometimes it's nice to know that something you believe in is not only shared, but respected. In one fell swoop, the photographs of Ted Croner at once stoked an inspirational fire that has not been so driven in quite a while and also bolstered my personal confidence in my approach to the art form. Life can be a surprising journey from time to time, and it's little moments like the one tonight that can draw the focus on something much bigger you were never aware of. It's hard to accurately describe the kind of feeling such a moment creates, but it's one worth writing about and it's one that I would encourage everyone to go out and find.

Also, I have to again apologize for yesterday's entry. Yikes. Nine more days!

28 x 28: February Fourteen

Today is a day notable to many on one of two extreme stances. At one end of this vast and uncompromising spectrum is a group of people who believe that the idea of a holiday based around romantic gift giving and celebration for the sake of it is inherently stupid. On the other end lies a group who are excited merely by the prospect of a chance to appreciate the love of another in a way that exemplifies feelings felt throughout the year in a more forward manner. So the question becomes then what exactly Valentine's Day entails? More importantly, what is so special about this love thing that it should get a day of reflection?

To begin, I think that at it's core Valentine's Day is supposed to be a day where we feel thankful and appreciative of someone special in our life who makes us feel less alone and brings us some degree of happiness be it little or profound. Of course, like many holidays the purpose and message of the holiday is so perverted by the world around us that it would not be a stretch to think that the day has been morphed fundamentally from its original intention. Nowadays it could be argued that Valentine's Day is a cheap excuse to buy candy and flowers in an attempt to save face with someone you care about. It's kind of a double standard wherein even if you genuinely care about someone, you are essentially forced to re-emphasize that bond for the sake of keeping up appearances. I find myself of a more optimistic mindset when it comes to this most fluffy of holidays. Instead of basking in cynicism, it would benefit everyone to embrace what the core of February 14th is all about. We should all be lucky enough to appreciate the day and analyze the people around us who care enough to enrich our lives in some way or another. Surely the stigmas surrounding any largely industrialized holiday remain intact, but perception is key to any event in life. A day is what we make it, and Valentine's is no exception assuming you are not jaded enough to notice.

This all brings me to the very subject, or at least the intent of, the holiday: love. Love is a complex and layered word that can mean a plethora of things. Love can signify anything from a deep and sincere caring about another person, to one of the most profound and driving forces any one human being can encounter in their natural lives. Love is an emotion and an entity that can at once move humans to acts of great compassion to acts of unbelievable greed all in the name of something that completes everyone on a very primal level. Love is a force of nature, and by simply being such a thing defies the constraints of logic and rationality. Love can make us say and do things we never thought possible both good and bad. As much as we all would like to rationalize and confine how and why we love; no one's judgment is free of the wonderful and terribly powerful influence that brings us all to act uncouth.

It is upon this sentiment that I wish everyone who reads this to appreciate whatever it is in your life today worthy of your love. If you are lucky enough to have someone special in your life who would go above and beyond the regular call of human connections to make you feel better than yourself, embrace it and champion it. Love as a force of nature is by definition unpredictable. No one among us can know its path, and sometimes in the grand ebb and flow of time all we have is but a moment together. Valentine's Day is about seizing that proverbial moment and punctuating it with a statement that in this specific moment, someone meant something to you that transcended the everyday and made you feel as close to whole as humanity is meant to feel. These sentiments can be felt in many complex and multifaceted ways both moving and imperceptible. The point of it all is that Valentine's celebrates the overwhelming and civilization altering powers of love and the profundity of these forces we can't control and which without we could not survive.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone, and may your moment today be one for the ages that reminds you why the other 364 days in a year are worth doing together.