maxims

Maxims from the Chair (2004)

The Do’s
  • -Do something old in a new way
  • -Do something new in an old way
  • -Do something new in a new way, Whatever works . . . works
  • -Do it sharp, if you can’t, call it art
  • -Do it in the computer—if it can be done there
  • -Do fifty of them—you will definitely get a show
  • -Do it big, if you can’t do it big, do it red
  • -If all else fails turn it upside down, if it looks good it might work
  • -Do Bend your knees
  • -If you don’t know what to do, look up or down —but continue looking
  • -Do celebrities—if you do a lot of them, you’ll get a book
  • -Connect with others—network
  • -Edit it yourself
  • -Design it yourself
  • -Publish it yourself
  • -Edit, When in doubt shoot more
  • -Edit again
  • -Read Darwin, Marx, Joyce, Freud, Einstein, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Barth
  • -See Citizen Kane ten times
  • -Look at everything—stare
  • -Construct your images from the edge inward
  • -If it’s the “real world,” do it in color
  • -If it can be done digitally—do it
  • -Be self-centered, self-involved, and generally entitled and always pushing—and damned to hell for doing it
  • -Break all rules, except the chairman’s

 

The Don’ts
  • -Don’t do it about yourself—or your friend—or your family
  • -Don’t dare photograph yourself nude
  • -Don’t look at old family albums
  • -Don’t hand color it
  • -Don’t write on it
  • -Don’t use alternative process—if it ain’t straight do it in the computer
  • -Don’t gild the lily—AKA less is more
  • -Don’t go to video when you don’t know what else to do
  • -Don’t photograph indigent people, particularly in foreign lands
  • -Don’t whine, just produce

 

The Truisms
  • -Good work sooner or later gets recognized
  • -There are a lot of good photographers who need it
  • -before they are dead
  • -If you walk the walk, sooner or later you’ll learn to talk the talk
  • -If you talk the talk too much, sooner or later you are probably not walking the walk (don’t bullshit)
  • -Photographers are the only creative people that don’t pay attention to their predecessors work—if you imitate something good, you are more likely to succeed
  • -Whoever originated the idea will surely be forgotten until he or she’s dead—corollary: steal someone else’s idea before they die
  • -If you have to imitate, at least imitate something good
  • -Know the difference
  • -Critics never know what they really like
  • -Critics are the first to recognize the importance of that which is already known in the community at large
  • -The best critics are the ones who like your work
  • -Theoreticians don’t like to look—they’re generally too busy writing about themselves
  • -Given enough time, theoreticians will contradict and reverse themselves
  • -Practice does not follow theory
  • -Theory follows practice
  • -All artists think they’re self-taught
  • -All artists lie, particularly about their dates and who taught them
  • -No artist has ever seen the work of another artist (the exception being the post-modernists who’ve adapted appropriation as another means of reinventing the history)
  • -The curator or the director is the one in black
  • -The artist is the messy one in black
  • -The owner is the one with the Prada bag
  • -The gallery director is the one who recently uncovered the work of a forgotten person from his or her widower
  • -Every galleriest has to discover someone
  • -Every curator has to re-discover someone
  • -The best of them is the one who shows your work
  • -Every generation re-discovers the art of photography
  • -Photography history gets reinvented every ten years
  • -New galleries discover old photographers
  • -Galleries need to fill their walls—corollary: thus new talents will always be found
  • -Galleriests say hanging pictures is an art
  • -There are no collectors, only people with money
  • -Anyone who buys your work is a collector—your parents don’t count
  • -All photographers are voyeurs
  • -Admit it and get on with looking
  • -Everyone, is narcissistic, anyone can be photographed
  • -Photography is about looking
  • -Learning how to look takes practice
The Truisms (continued)
  • -All photography, in the right context at the right time is valuable
  • -It is always a historical document
  • -Sooner or later someone will say it is art
  • -Any photographer can call himself an artist,
  • -But not every artist can call himself a photographer
  • -Compulsiveness helps
  • -Neatness helps too
  • -Hard work helps the most
  • -The style is felt—fashion is fad
  • -Remember, its usually about who, what, where, when, why, and how
  • -It is who you know ,
  • -Many a good idea is found in a garbage can
  • -But darkrooms are dark. . . and dank, forgidaboudit
  • -The best exposure is the one that works
  • -Expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights
  • -Or better yet, shoot digitally.
  • -Cameras don’t think, they don’t have memories
  • -But digital cameras have something called memory
  • -Learn to see as the camera sees, don’t try to make it see as the human eye
  • -Remember digital point and shoots are faster than Leicas
  • -Though the computer can correct anything,a bad image is a bad image
  • -If all else fails, you can remember, again, to either do it large or red
  • -Or, tear it up and tape it together
  • -It always looks better on the wall framed
  • -If they don’t sell, raise your price
  • -Self-importance rises with the prices of your images on the wall
  • -The work of a dead artist is always more valuable than the work of a live one
  • -You can always pretend to kill yourself and start all over.