Art, optimism, pessimism, Precisionism
Seeing the Precisionist art that I have lately is nudging me toward more photography. I guess it's kind of validating, seeing that there were people who looked, most of a century ago, at machinery and infrastructure with the same kind of artistic minds and sensibilities that I have. It gives me a certain sense of externally-originating legitimacy. It makes me want to go on some bike trips through industrial Chicago with my cameras, as I've been doing through some of natural Hamilton.
At the same time, the age of American industry is fading into the age of service and information. For the Precisionists, they were seeing the shape of the present and future. For me, as it's always been, it's seeing the past. The context means so much. Precisionist art and photography is part of a hopeful retro-futurism that makes me happy. It was so easy to feel good about the future, looking at these exciting machines. I see Precisionist art as inherently optimistic.
But what will mine be? I don't want to make pessimistic, retrospective art that longs for a mostly mythical golden age. There's enough of that already, and glamorizing the past at the expense of the present is counter-productive. How can I make art out of the machines and infrastructure that entrance me without taking the easy path of ruin porn? Picture of dead and dying buildings can be beautiful, and I want to keep making them. But I also want to make art of living machinery. Shining, hissing diesel locomotives; not dull, silent steam engines. Humming transformers with their conical ceramic offsets and high-voltage cables, not gashes in walls cut by scrappers to steal electrical conduit. Life, as well as death, and the transformation between those states that these inanimate objects progress through. I've focused a lot on deaths of the inanimate. That's important, but there's more than that. I'd like to create art that fosters optimism instead of nostalgia and loss.
That is, if anybody finds my art moving anyway. Maybe they don't and I'm just flattering myself to think I'm producing anything beyond a few colorful pixels that people can look at for a second and scroll by. I don't know. I'm feeling a lot of self-doubt and negativity lately, and that's kept me from doing much art. Maybe that's part of why I'm feeling a need to change focus.
What active infrastructure is near me in Chicago? What can I travel to by bike, hang out with, get to know, talk to, learn about, and make images of? If depression lifts long enough to actually do some shooting, I intend to find out.
If I end up getting arrested, please tell the police that I'm mostly harmless.
At the same time, the age of American industry is fading into the age of service and information. For the Precisionists, they were seeing the shape of the present and future. For me, as it's always been, it's seeing the past. The context means so much. Precisionist art and photography is part of a hopeful retro-futurism that makes me happy. It was so easy to feel good about the future, looking at these exciting machines. I see Precisionist art as inherently optimistic.
But what will mine be? I don't want to make pessimistic, retrospective art that longs for a mostly mythical golden age. There's enough of that already, and glamorizing the past at the expense of the present is counter-productive. How can I make art out of the machines and infrastructure that entrance me without taking the easy path of ruin porn? Picture of dead and dying buildings can be beautiful, and I want to keep making them. But I also want to make art of living machinery. Shining, hissing diesel locomotives; not dull, silent steam engines. Humming transformers with their conical ceramic offsets and high-voltage cables, not gashes in walls cut by scrappers to steal electrical conduit. Life, as well as death, and the transformation between those states that these inanimate objects progress through. I've focused a lot on deaths of the inanimate. That's important, but there's more than that. I'd like to create art that fosters optimism instead of nostalgia and loss.
That is, if anybody finds my art moving anyway. Maybe they don't and I'm just flattering myself to think I'm producing anything beyond a few colorful pixels that people can look at for a second and scroll by. I don't know. I'm feeling a lot of self-doubt and negativity lately, and that's kept me from doing much art. Maybe that's part of why I'm feeling a need to change focus.
What active infrastructure is near me in Chicago? What can I travel to by bike, hang out with, get to know, talk to, learn about, and make images of? If depression lifts long enough to actually do some shooting, I intend to find out.
If I end up getting arrested, please tell the police that I'm mostly harmless.