Bob Kiss (bobkiss@caribsurf.com)
Fri, 23 Jul 1999 15:09:33 -0700
DEAT LIST,
I have been sitting here at my light table working on the foremantioned
collections of early 20th C glass plate negatives by Parkinson and I found I
could restrain myself no longer. Have some of you not been reading the
comments?
Why keep your negs! Five feet away from me is proof of their value as
historical documents and the fact that prints have a nasty habit of going
out of circulation or at least out of reach of researchers from many fields
and students, limited edition or not, commercial or fine art in original
intent or not!
Did no one read the rather erudite comments (I forget the author) about
two hats. First you make your photographs for love, for art...because you
must! Then, you change hats and sell them! I have never made a personal fine
art photo with the intent to sell...I made them because I was moved by what
I saw and how I saw it and HAD TO share that vision..it was an emotional
imperative. Then after making prints I realized I wanted to share them so I
put up a show...then to my amazement they sold! I do not feel dirty! I feel
great that some one saw what I saw...felt what I felt...perhaps not exactly
but they resonated with the intense feelings that made me make the photo.
AND THEN THEY DECIDED THAT THEY WANTED TO LIVE WITH IT AND BOUGHT IT. As
someone else mentioned...it is a great SPIRITUAL feedback...and since I have
not as of yet had TOO much experience of giving my spirit a home without a
body, nor can I buy film, paper, pt/pd chemicals or even aqua regia (just
kidding!) WITHOUT MONEY I didn't refuse the money. As I stated before,
Michaelangelo took the money from Pope Julius II for the Cistine...was it
not inspired? Was he influenced by the financal pressure? BUNK! Monet was
VERY successful by the time he bought Giverney...did his Lilly Pads suffer?
Did his work suffer when he was poor? My answer is a quote from Richard
Bach's REVELATIONS, CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT MESSIAH: "Argue for your
limitations and, by god, they will be yours!" It is not a new idea or an
impossible task to create purely and clearly and then turn around and market
well that which your have created from a clear soul! If you say it is, you
are telling us about your limitation...not ours!
Perhaps my adamacy comes from the fact that I was a fashion photographer
from 1974 to 1992 and I know what it is to sell your soul...at least I sold
it to the highest bidder! Well, I have reclaimed it by quitting commercial
work and making my living selling my personal fine art work. I knew what it
is to try to please a market...to cover a BIG NYC studio overhead. I did
almost NO personal work. It is always said there is no more staunch
anti-drug advocate than a former addict...there is no more staunch opponent
of allowing "market pressures" to influence my aesthetic senses than a
former commercial photographer. However, as I am no virgin in the market
place, I have no qualms about selling my work to live...a whole lot of
artists and photographers have, quite successfully, and we have whispered
their names in awe even on this net.
I sincerely appologize if my feet of clay slip on the way up the ivory
tower. Now, I must go back to work on the Parkinson negatives and and get
ready to shoot some 8X10 negs by evening light of some lovely lillies that
only bloom for two weeks in July from which I will make LIMITED EDITION
PLATINUM/PALLADIUM PRINTS. I will make the photos because the lillies are
the most subtle grades of white and pink and the evening light here in
Barbados is like the gold light you always see spilling out of Heaven in the
renaissance ascension paintings. Should look pretty O.K. in warm PT/PD. I am
doing this because I love what I see, because I feel god has done it
again...made a miracle of vision and I hope to "hold a mirror..." as
Ol' Bill Shakespeare said. It will be nice if they sell but,
FRANKLY SCARLETT, I DON'T GIVE A DAMN!"
CHEERS FROM
BARBADOS!
BOB KISS
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 28 1999 - 21:40:37