Shooting Wide Open

I found an article by Joshua Benton from last year called “If They Won’t Pay for Facebook, They Won’t Pay for Your City Hall Reporter” which brings up a good point about substitute goods and free media: people nowadays want online media and social networking for free because they believe that if one thing dies, another will simply pop up in its place since the tech field is so crowded and booming. He then hones in on news in the comments section and points out that these substitutions are not necessarily paid news for free news. For most people, it is more like paid news for free time-killer:

Is the issue whether someone can produce Toledo city council coverage at a lower price than you can? Or is the appropriate substitute good “something that can fill a Toledoan’s time and attention for five minutes or so”? A lot of reporters tend to argue the former; I think for the most part it’s the latter. Most people have always viewed stories about Toledo city council as something entertaining or interesting to fill a slot of their time. That slot can now be filled with a gazillion other things, for free, online.

I think the number of people who really, really care about Toledo city council is a small fraction of the total audience. What, maybe 5%, tops? Which is why I think if news orgs are going to charge for things online, they can only do so through targeted products or services that go after the small fraction of their audience who actually care about the news qua news.

One commenter points out that people are unwilling to begin paying for what used to be free, which means that all those print publications who put free content online in the early days as a way to draw more readers to the print editions are now regretting it since their readers resist a pay model. (See The Newsweekly’s Last Stand, about how the Economist is thriving in print precisely because they had a lackluster web strategy.)

Another salient comment: “Newspapers should figure out what people are willing to pay for, rather than trying to force people to pay for content that they clearly don’t value.” There was a similar point made at the recent Aurora Forum panel talk about documentary photography and social change. A woman asked the panelists – David Cohen (author of What Matters), documentary photographer Ed Kashi and professor Michael Watts – about their opinion on a NY Times piece on business strategies used by advertisers vs non-profit social change groups. The implication was that businesses were much better at getting people to act (buy) than non-profits are at getting people to act (donate, volunteer).

Cohen responded that in fact his books have been on the Times best-seller list so there’s plenty of business acumen behind these projects, and furthermore, it isn’t a fair comparison since it’s inherently easier to get people to want and buy, say, big screen TVs than it is to get them to help other people in distant countries. (I was hoping someone would point out that this is a pathetic result of our social values which we shouldn’t abide.) I get the sense that a lot of people involved in social change take no small amount of pride in doing things for moral right and hesitate to taint their cause by taking a page out of the advertising playbook, but Cohen’s individual success aside (I think he took the criticism a bit personally), it would be beneficial for more non-profits to think seriously about how to package their missions in a way that isn’t as manipulative as advertising but holds out something for concrete to targeted masses than simply “do good for the moral right of it” in a world where most people obviously are not most motivated to act by that alone.

For example, can more activist groups adopt the Obama campaign web strategy of asking for specific small one-off amounts online rather than the classic “pay $20 for yearly membership” or “pay $50 to reach ‘patron’ status”? According to David Pogue, the “App Store Effect” equals more profit despite a lower price:

If you cut a software program’s price in half, you sell far more than twice as many copies. If you cut it to one-tenth, you sell far more than 10 times as many. And so on. iPhone/iPod Touch fans downloaded 1 billion apps within 9 months. Some iPhone programmers have become millionaires within months–yes, selling $1 software–because of this crazy math. $20 may sound like more than $1, but not when 1,000 times more people buy at $1.

I don’t think it’s out of line to think along these lines. I suppose that’s why social entrepreneurship (microloans is just one example) has gained some momentum in recent years.

One last thought – news/print media seems to be very business-minded is when it comes to cooperation. As I’ve mentioned before, I attended a panel discussion on journalism back in May. During the Q&A, an audience member asked if ganging together was a way forward, if it wouldn’t be better for all publications to pool resources, share information and link to each other. In other words, some sort of journalism collective instead of separate entities fighting to drive each other out of business and really driving everyone out of business.

The panelists insisted that they were already linking to each other and didn’t say much more than that. I don’t think they understood the sense of collaboration that the audience member probably meant – not just superficial linking to drive traffic, but a deeper operation-based collective. Each newspaper or magazine has a limited budget that might not be enough to finance very many original investigative pieces, but for issues where they both have an interest in breaking a story, instead of both parties working on the same thing, stories getting killed, and each trying to outdo the other, they could print investigative pieces as a joint venture. A piece brought out jointly by the Times and the WSJ (maybe that’s an unfortunately grouping) certainly sounds impressive to me. Each publication could still retain independent daily reporting duties and opinion pages, but there must be content that bridges ideological divides.

I don’t know the ins and outs of reporting, but common sense dictates that if you’re on a sinking ship, it’s better to put your heads together and build a raft than to cling to your own little pieces of flotsam, none of which are sufficient to keep anybody afloat. There are more choices these days about how we present information, we need to get better at finding the proper avenue for any given piece of info without slaughtering each other.

Sara Code-Kroll

I’d been meaning to link to Sara Code-Kroll’s North Dakota project for too long. The Women on TV series hits the right spot too, but it’s more visceral of a reaction.

In the news: the BBC reports on photo sensors woven into fabric polymers:

Clothes could one day take snaps of everything happening around whoever is wearing them.

US researchers have made smart fabric that can detect the wavelength and direction of light falling on it. The research team has found a way to accurately place sensors in each fibre and co-ordinate the electrical signals they send when light falls on them. The results were a step towards “ambient light imaging fabrics” said the researchers.

Now that’s portability.

Charles Gatewood

I found the ’70s street photography of Charles Gatewood today and was very gratified to see graphic elements rather than the usual crowds of commuters or dolled up women. You can see more on the Robert Tat (SF) gallery site. I tried to make a permanent link, but if it doesn’t work, search for Charles Gatewood.

Speak of San Francisco, I also saw an interesting initiative from the SF Arts Commission today that might be worth applying to if you’re looking to show work (not just photography). They are looking to place art into vacant storefronts (3 more near my street in the last couple of months) to beautify and make use of empty space. Damn good idea, if you ask me. They haven’t released details yet, but you can sign up for their mailing list.

Seeking Artists to Transform Storefronts with Installations

The SFAC’s Community Arts & Education Program and the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development have partnered to create a pilot Art in Storefronts program that places art temporarily in vacant storefront windows. Tough economic times have left many storefronts empty throughout the City, and this program encourages an alternative use of storefronts to reinvigorate and celebrate our neighborhoods, improve streetscape conditions, and support local merchants by increasing foot traffic.

And speak of storefronts, I was told a story overheard from a building manager of a frustrated thief. During the night, someone breaks into the second storey of a building to lift some goods. Except that the business on the second floor has gone out of business and the rooms are vacant. So he breaks into the third floor. Which also turns out to be vacant. He’s so mad by the time that he breaks into the fourth floor that the building manager comes the next morning to find the entire door ripped off its hinges. Then the story was cut off by closing elevator doors. Did he find goods on the fourth floor? Nothing? Old Betamax players? Hello Kitty clocks? What a cliffhanger.

Eliot Shepard

His Spots, I think, are more interesting than his People, but maybe I am more of a Spot person to begin with.

The Edgar Martins digital manipulation brouhaha is ridiculous. Rob at a photo editor points out that in a recent interview, Martins had said, “When I photograph I don’t do any post production to the images, either in the darkroom or digitally, because it erodes the process. So I respect the essence of these spaces.” Talking about adding insult to injury.

To think that you could put something so obvious (look at this photo and tell me where the stairs are going) in the NY Times Magazine of all places, and on the internet no less, and no one would catch it in this day and age of crowdsourcing and pixel-peeping is just insane. Adam Gurno, the guy who first spotted the fake and called it on Metafilter, recalls a maxim in computer programming: “To 10,000 eyes all bugs are shallow.”

The sad thing is that it would’ve made a perfectly good art piece if he’d been upfront about it. But to give it to the Times as journalism, ugh.

Edit: I’ve edited the text to fix some errors and add some links. Also, Heading East looks at a couple of photos from Martins’ portfolio made using the same technique. Martins’ claims about his work are quite strange considering.

Michelle Keim

In one hand, Michelle Keim’s series of industrial night photographs, Iron Beauties, is surreal and astounding. I especially like the more abstract ones shot from over a hill, where you can’t quite tell what you are looking at. It’s easier to view the photos on the Edelman Gallery site than her own site, which seems to be a little out of date.

In the other hand, good advice, in a letter from Sol Lewitt to Eva Hesse, seen on the Hey Hotshot blog:

You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-tricking, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO… Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world… You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO! I have much confidence in YOU and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work. The worst you think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell.

UPDATE: Just read this great interview with her.

Akiyoshi Kitaoka

Happy 4th!

This is probably as close as I’ll ever get to showing you multiple fireworks. Speaking of which, I nabbed one of the 8x10s of Mike Sinclair’s fireworks on the 4th shot over at 20×200. What a great way to get affordable art and see the prints of photographers whose work you can’t access in person.

Anyhoo, these are color illusions. The light colored arms of the first image are the same color, as are the green and blue spirls in the third image. Each picture in the second row has the same two colors of spiral, but they look different. What else do graphic designers probably know that we don’t?

There’s plenty more on the website. Looking at the patchwork hearts, I realized I never understood Lichtenstein’s Rouen Cathedral paintings properly. My bad.

Stephen Shore

How did aesthetics come to dominate so in journalism anyway? I think it’s somewhat natural. Part of the problem is that we have a serious fetish for grouping similar-looking things together. (I admit it, at least once in my childhood I was that obsessive kid who sorted and resorted all the buttons in the sewing box into different combinations for no reason. Just to see.) When a museum mounts a show, more often than not it focuses on the aesthetic of a given time, the milieu or influences/influencees of certain famous photographers, rather than on how certain subjects have been depicted differently in different times. It’s the high art version of celebrity fixation. I can see how this would be an effective way to shed light on artistic movements where stylistic change is paramount, but it’s somewhat inappropriate with documentary subjects.

I’d like to see a lot more content-driven rather than photographer-driven shows, but unfortunately probably only the large institutions have the depth of inventory and organizing clout to do it. And as a practical matter, it’s a lot easier to organize a show with one or two photographers than 10 or 20. (Though I did manage to see Into the Sunset at the MOMA and that was a great show, though the subject of the American West is a rather broad and amorphous one.)

But it’s not just a problem of inadequate inventory. Depth of knowledge is basically a barrier to entry. You not only need to have a piece, you need to know that it exists in the first place and it’s a lot easier search and sort by milieu than content (looking forward to the metadata revolution, anyone?). And when physical objects like books are sorted according to content via the Library of Congress method (and that’s only if you have access to a library with serious horsepower), it’s a pain to check out the work of one particular photographer. Can’t we have our cake and eat it too?

One could argue that it’s good that someone needs to amass a deep knowledge of the field before taking on curatorial responsibilities, but while I admire anyone who’s worked in their field for a long time, with some things, I believe the faster we can do them, the better off we are. If someone has an idea, then by all means, I consider it good to be able to bring that to fruition as quickly and efficiently as they’d like. I suppose doing it a slower and more trial/error way builds character though. (Have you ever noticed that it’s mostly unpleasant things that build character?)

Even on the internet it’s hard to search by subject. Say I want to see fine art and documentary work on our car-driven culture. What search terms do I Google to find the critically acclaimed and renowned work as opposed to random shots of cars? Put it this way – what terms do I have to search for to see Andrew Bush’s Vector series? Where’s the database where I can search fine art and documentary photos by subject and get results for projects about actual car culture rather than just photos with cars in them? Will it always be my obligation to sort the two ‘manually’? Do I type “photography car culture” into the MOMA search box? (Tried it – meh.) In a nutshell, how do I find what I’m looking for unless I already know what I’m looking for, aside from paying attention indefinitely til I stumble upon it?

(I will have to approach an art librarian, see if I’m employing deficient search methods.)