ROSS EVERTSON, PHOTO (BLOG, INFO)

Toronto, Ontario 2007

Toronto, Ontario 2007

I wonder how much energy all of these machines are using, blogging about the environment.

Read all about Blog Action Day

Toronto, Ontario 2007

While I was in Toronto, with no sense of irony at all, I made dozens of photographs of the CN Tower. It is the tallest free standing structure in the world, but it quickly becomes a highly ubiquitous feature of the skyline when you are plodding around the city on foot.

From any distance it looks like a dated sci-fi prop and up until the moment I was standing underneath it I had a hard time mustering any awe whatsoever. Nonetheless, its’ omnipresence during my explorations in the city—the never ending spire-peak-a-boo, popping out behind other structures—compelled me to photograph and rephotograph.

For this reason alone would have I cast my vote for the Canadian National Tower in Cabinet Magazine’s Most Phallic Building in the World contest, had some lame building in Michigan not already won.

Davin made these comps a few years ago, but I am pretty sure I was the inspiration. I think.

Benny and Arch, ‘06 © Shelby Lee Adams

I’m going to try and kick these off with photographers I have already mentioned on this blog. So, first off, we have Shelby Lee Adams. As much as I would like to critique this and all future statements I post, I will try to refrain out of respect and fear. Don’t let that stop you, though.

Every summer, traveling through the mountains photographing, I am somehow able to renew and relive my childhood. I regain my southern, mountain accent and approach my people with openness, facination, and respect; and they treat me with respect. My psychic antennae become sharpened and acute. I love these people, perhaps that is it, plain and simple. I respond to the sensual beauty of a hardened face with many scars, the deeply etched lines and flickers of sweat containing bright spots of sunlight. The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their acceptance of me is gratifying. For me, this is rejuvenation of the spirit of time past, and I am better for the experience each time it happens. These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection.

My work has been an artist search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people.

Shelby Lee Adams

Shelby has a blog that is as seemingly as new and as oft-updated as my own.

The dry spot on my porch created by the New York Times - Echo Park, Calif. 2006

Being accountable totally blows. The fact that some people think you should be responsible for the things you say and do is one of the more frustrating things about not being five years old. So it’s a shame that more artists aren’t five. Instead they are often hormonally realized adult human beings. They have fully developed frontal lobes that hold them accountable for their actions, artistic or otherwise.

Some artists resist accountability, at least on paper or in interviews. Or in any public venue. Or at home. Some people might think that it is noble, or at least respectable, to claim that your work either doesn’t need or would be ill-served by being bound to a statement. I suppose that’s fair, but is operating on the assumption that people probably don’t care for any supplemental insight into the work. Which is probably also fair.

It is so easy to write a bad statement, even for a great body of work, that it is something that most people have come to expect and resent. Nobody likes to be told what to do–especially hormonally realized adult art patrons–and too often an artist’s statement will tell you how you are experiencing the work. “This blog post forces you to consider your position as a spectator in relation to an art-language-loop.” Right?

I write about my work constantly, via email with other photographers, in “actual” statements, or in notebooks when I am in the middle of a project. It literally is a different language with which to approach and consider what I am doing and I find it a very necessary component to understanding and advancing my work. I also appreciate insightful, informative and helpful statements from other artists. Even more so, I appreciate the schadenfreude experience that comes with reading a truly bad, self-important statement that is neither enlightening or useful in any way.

Starting either later today or tomorrow I am going to start posting statements as I find them. Out of respect and fear I will not comment on them. I will not point out which one made me pee my pants, or the one that originally inspired me to continually write about my work. I originally wanted to be funny about the whole thing, with a grading system that was named with a hilarious acronym. Introspection and counsel reminded me that to be respectful isn’t a bad thing.

So here’s to the glory of lobes and accountability.

both cats - Denver, Colo. 2006