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<\/a>I got this book<\/a> last weekend at the Friends of the Christian County Library book fair, and last night I discovered that listening to the ball game on the radio lends itself to reading<\/em> text even less than watching a baseball (or football) game on television does because you have to listen and process the words instead of having the visual shortcut of the image to keep up with what’s going on. So I learned a bit about my cognitive processes and picked this collection of photographs up to flip through while listening to the game.<\/p>\nIt’s a collection of images of, guess what? The ground–along with some vegetation and landscape features–in Texas. That’s a twist ending, ainna?<\/p>\n
In the middle of the baseball game, while flipping through a book of photographs, I had an epiphany that I’d probably read somewhere else before: At some point, art stopped being about depicting something and all about being Art. Hear me out:<\/p>\n
These images were taken and selected because of the different interpositions of the textures of, say, stones and tree bark or a mushroom amid dirt and grass. Okay, that’s a nice study, but what is it supposed to mean to the viewer? Nothing more than that: What might be good practice or technique studies becomes the art itself. Unlike, say, Bittersweet Ozarks at a Glance<\/em><\/a> with its pictures of people and places, this book doesn’t really give anything for a layman to grip onto except the technique. It’s art for other photographers. Kind of like modern literature is jazz improvisation without a theme or motif or modern painting and sculpture is just technique for itself. The medium is the message, kinda.<\/p>\n Or maybe I just don’t like landscapes particularly. Take your pick.<\/p>\n At any rate, this particular volume was originally $20 at Hooked on Books because it was autographed by the author, but I got it for a buck from its sale room some time after that initial decision was made. So it feels like a particular deal.<\/p>\n Books mentioned in this review:<\/b>
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