|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/9/2003 12:37:11 PM
The reflections are lense flare. The camera is pointed virtually into the late-afternoon sun ? upper right-hand corner ? and it is, in the end, part of the picture. Personally, I like the motif of sunset as it consumes the image, but that's a personal call; what ever the case, printing this picture has been a nightmare.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/8/2003 7:13:42 PM
That's a very solid document Dennis. I'm impressed, especially because it seems to be studied more than your snapshot-style photos. You bring a thoughtful reserve to color that keeps it from being sentimental, or cheesy. Thank you for the work.
|
| Photo By: Dennis Komis
(K:3160)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/8/2003 12:57:58 PM
I think the low contrast treatment is terrific. Don't pander to the instant impact crowd at the expense of the material. I'm glad to see this work getting a good reception. Keep those cards and letters coming.
|
| Photo By: ginger sorbara
(K:59)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/6/2003 6:29:34 PM
I enjoy the way that the center of the photograph is a void, with all the apparent 'interest' of the work spread around the edges, and cut off. Lovely work. Thank you for it, and the entire body of work around it.
|
| Photo By: anabela oliveira
(K:514)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/6/2003 6:26:11 PM
Addendum: there is also a nice Friedlander quality to the picture that I admire; I think it is the inclusion of the rear-view mirror that so tantalizes me. Overall, I'd add it to my favorites in the "windshield survey" class of photography.
|
| Photo By: Dennis Komis
(K:3160)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/6/2003 6:22:20 PM
It has occured to me that, if you don't know them, you would enjoy the photographs of William Egglestone, another southerner (I think) whose work in the early seventies brought color into the artistic community of photographers, via the Museum of Modern Art. On the other hand, you probably know the work and I'm just being presumptious. Your photographs and his do share a certain relationship to color that is engaging and admirable. What I can't be sure of just now is whether your technique is deliberately throw-away, or planned and just very casual. This photograph is tremendous but would have a lot of problems sustaining anything bigger than a small print, I think. In that I may be wrong. Whatever the case, it holds my interest and I admire it a good deal. Thank you for the work.
|
| Photo By: Dennis Komis
(K:3160)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/5/2003 8:10:47 PM
This is an excellent, if romantic image. I am impressed by the details in the shadows, and by the discipline of the image generally. Fine work, thank you.
|
| Photo By: Gavin Docherty
(K:0)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/2/2003 9:05:42 AM
Nothing much comes or goes here anymore.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/2/2003 9:03:09 AM
Thanks for your recent comments. I like this work, shows a concern with color for its own sake, without foresaking the material. I think you may be more concerned with the blues than I am; for me its the double pathos of country music in general ? the intended pathos, always on the surface in lost love and friends and land and work, and the unintentional pathos, the tragic sense that the singer doesn't know how truly contemptable self-pity is in others eyes. Good work. I'd like to see more.
|
| Photo By: Dennis Komis
(K:3160)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
11/2/2003 8:49:06 AM
Terrific documentation of a place that's hard to photograph. Thank you.
|
Photo By: John Pike
(K:315)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/30/2003 6:22:32 AM
It's a desert. There aren't very many people at all (Eureka calls itself "The Lonliest Town on the Lonliest Highway in the World") and they stay inside as much as they can during the day. And I'm not trying to photograph the people, just the evidence of their passing.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/27/2003 5:13:58 AM
This is a great document. I'd love to see more. Thank you.
|
| Photo By: anabela oliveira
(K:514)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/25/2003 7:54:14 PM
This is a fine portrait. I appreciate the context.
|
| Photo By: Anji Johnson
(K:0)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/25/2003 6:42:26 PM
I think this is an excellent portrait, and a very restrained photograph. Thank you for the work.
|
| Photo By: Lukasz Sieradzki
(K:48)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/25/2003 6:37:49 PM
Driving #30, on Kerouac?s path, I could feel the road climb out of the prairies onto the high plains well before I noticed the absence of trees, or even, generally, green; for away from a water course, by late summer the high plains are seldom green.
And even then it isn?t the absence of trees: what holds you then is the presence of an enormous, all-encompassing sky, a sky with nowhere to hide, naked to the horizon in every direction.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/20/2003 11:00:06 PM
To answer Katrin's question, at this particular moment I am rattling around Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming, carrying far too much larger-format equipment, driving too fast, sleeping in the kind of motels where the towels are very thin and so are the walls, trying to photograph The Big Empty in the middle of America. I've never been better, or happier.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/5/2003 9:59:46 PM
This is a classic documentary, nicely executed. There seems to be good detail in the shadows. Thanks.
|
| Photo By: Federico Garza
(K:386)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/5/2003 7:32:02 PM
I'm putting the essay onto this site, a few images at a time. The entire span of the photographs is from 1993 to 2003, and right now, unless you find one of the readings of the text in progress, you will only find the images here. I'll be travelling through the late fall in Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska to fill out the material, and close down the research.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/5/2003 7:25:46 PM
In 1866, with the Union Pacific foundering financially, Oliver Ames assumed the presidency of the Railroad while Oakes Ames became the president of Credit Mobilier. As the Encyclopedia of American Business History delicately puts it:
"The Union Pacific formed a separately incorporated construction company to finance and build the line. In addition to the limited liability a corporation offered investors, the construction company offered near-term profits on a project that was risky and unprofitable except in its long-term prospects."
To put it a more baldly, one enterprise ? the construction company ? profited wildly from its monopoly, taking those profits from another company ? the railroad ? which, if it was to profit at all, must have huge grants of land along the line to sell in the future, for town sites and agricultural settlement. With the cooperation of the Federal government that is what happened, always moved along by the reputation of the Ames brothers as men of substance and helped not a little by Oakes? dual positions: president of the construction company, and representative of the State of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1872, using copies of of Oakes? own correspondence, the New York Sun connected the dots and closed the circle of corruption: Oakes Ames had been selling shares of Credit Mobilier ? made extremely profitable by commissions from his brother?s railroad ? to fellow representatives in Congress, and a senator or two; in exchange the representatives supported vast grants of land, and the treasury bond loans necessary to keep the Union Pacific solvent. The value of the stock involved was small, and the railroad clearly profited the Federal Government (not least because frontier defense was now practical) but that did not matter to the combined chorus of journalists and politicians nearly as much as the evidence of collusion: the outcry was immediate. Over the course of two Congressional investigations, Oakes Ames was censured by Congress. Only days after his final fall from honour, in a narrative that would make shame fatal and pathetic fallacy a factor in government and fraud, Oakes Ames died, in disgrace.
|
| Photo By: Donald McKay
(K:340)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/5/2003 6:52:06 PM
If this is the product of faded Kodachrome. more people should leave their negatives out in the sun. I think it's a wonderful photograph, and if you have backed into a film-digital technique that is giving you results like this, keep doing it. Thanks for the photo, and thanks for going back into the archives.
|
| Photo By: Fred St. John
(K:25)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
10/1/2003 7:55:00 AM
Wonderful timing and composition. It's a really modest, very effective picture.
|
| Photo By: Ian T
(K:114)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
9/30/2003 3:30:50 PM
Except for the fringe of leaves overhead, which seem so schooled, I think this is a terrific picture ? just straight ahead.
|
| Photo By: Claudia F.
(K:2930)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
9/30/2003 4:27:48 AM
Wonderful depth. It's good to see work with more than one thing going on in it.
|
| Photo By: Daniel Navarro
(K:40)
|
|
|
Critique By:
Donald McKay (K:340)
9/30/2003 4:20:07 AM
Thank you for the silence in the photograph. I think the string bracelet makes the subject.
|
| Photo By: Bruno Espadana
(K:326)
|
|
