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Author Topic: from the front page: adam krawesky  (Read 19673 times)

32BT

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #260 on: January 12, 2019, 04:05:02 am »

Off topic: who is this guy, 32BT? Oscar that used to use the handle "opgr"? What happened?

Yes, it's me, Oscar. (Or actually, my artistic alter ego, da beat. I always sign physical work with 32BT. It's a coming out of sorts... Cool hé!)
To Ivo: you can set your display name under profile->account settings
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Regards,
~ O ~
If you can stomach it: pictures

Ivophoto

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #261 on: January 12, 2019, 08:06:01 am »

Yes, it's me, Oscar. (Or actually, my artistic alter ego, da beat. I always sign physical work with 32BT. It's a coming out of sorts... Cool hé!)
To Ivo: you can set your display name under profile->account settings

Cool, I will set my Lula display name same as my Tapatalk name!
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adam_krawesky

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #262 on: January 13, 2019, 05:04:43 pm »

hi everyone. i've enjoyed reading the discussion, feels like a throwback to the old streetphoto mailing list and forum days. it's increasingly rare to find lengthy and considered conversation online and i appreciate the attention focussed on my work and the digressions it seems to have spawned. thanks to everyone who has taken the time to write something.

i don't disagree with much of the negative criticism about the photos; i've expressed simliar doubts to myself about the work at times. ultimately i've come to understand that i don't care to make photos in that critical context but i still believe it can serve to improve the work if i listen to it.

i'd be remiss to not address a few things i took issue with:

i don't hang out in front of a location and wait for people to come through a frame. i've tried doing that and the result is even more boring than some already find the photos to be. i'm always on the move and many of these photos are shot while i'm walking, in mid stride myself. it adds some necessary kinetic energy to the frame. i understand that not everyone sees that or cares about it, but i do.

these kinds of photos are not easy to make, or at least it's not easy to do well. i too was dismissive of these kinds of photographs when i first saw them, and then i tried to make them. to be able to quickly make a reasonable facsimilie of this style is not sufficient to dismiss it. at the same time nothing is 'good' just because it's hard to do, i'm not saying that. if a photo doesn't pass the "who cares" test then it doesn't, but saying it's because the photo was 'too easy' is the actual thing that is too easy in that situation.

hopefully my tone is not too defensive, as i especially appreciate negative feedback because it's the most instructive and takes the most effort to write well. again my thanks to all who have taken the time to respond to the photos.
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adam_krawesky

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #263 on: January 13, 2019, 05:07:36 pm »

HCB's photograph embraces the clutter of the city and works with it, graphically, in a way that at most one of Krawesky's does, rather than carving it all out of the frame to simplify the problem of taking a picture.

HCB's photograph blurs the motion of the man, abstracting him into everyman. In to, it turns out, a representation of all the people who were making that same jump that day, but we don't know that offhand. We do see the abstract figure leaping.

HCB's photograph shows the man leaping to... somewhere? Nowhere? We don't know. We are free to guess, to extrapolate, to imagine, to spin allegories.

HCB's photograph distills a real event, albeit a tiny one, to its essence, places it in a frame that feels realistic by embracing the clutter of the city, and abstracts that event into something we are free to enlarge in our own minds.

Krawesky's pictures, on those rare occasions when anything at all is happening, feel unreal because he tends to crop out the clutter, and abstract nothing at all, leaving nowhere for us to go. We fall back the appeal of graphics and the color, and that is about it.

There are bits and pieces. The woman with her hair blowing over her eyes strikes me as having an element of something, but the rest of the frame is just a mess. The man standing low down by the window with LINC printed on it feels more realistic, more urban-cluttered, but it is utterly static. Nothing is happening, where do I go with this? The boy leaping for the sign feels like something. Maybe it wants to be an expression of childhood or something, but somehow there is a sterility to the frame that sabotages that -- all that empty space.

And so on. There are flashes of something here and there, but nothing comes together.

this is really thoughtful and useful criticism amolitor, thank you.
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amolitor

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Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
« Reply #264 on: January 13, 2019, 05:30:58 pm »

My pleasure, Adam. Good luck to you.
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