P3D Re: Detroit Meeting - Wednesday

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 23:01:33 -0700
>From: "Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: P3D Detroit Meeting - Wednesday

>...Competition assignment: "Contemporary".  The PSA definition states:
>"Contemporary photography may be defined as the concept that
>stimulates the mind of the viewer to interpret the message
>conveyed through the creative use of line, form, and color.
>The definition specifically includes computer generated/
>manipulated images."

>IMO, except for the last sentence, this is a totally worthless
>definition.  A form of photography is the "concept" that
>"stimulates the mind" to "interpret the message"???  WHAT DOES
>THAT MEAN???  I am sure no one asked an engineer or a practical
>person to review this...  "Creative use of line, form, and
>color"...  How is that different from ordinary photography?

Used loosely, it could mean anything. If one chooses a strict interpretation,
perhaps it means the emphasis is to be on borders, distinct physical
transitions, shapes, and large areas of distinct color, as opposed to
textures, shades, gradual changes, pastels, etc. "Stimulating the mind"
could mean provoking thought and interpretation particularly through
the visual interpretation portions of the brain that deal with
edge detection. (You may have already noticed that different types of
images and different types of viewing tend to "exercise" different parts
of the brain.) By "message" it could mean that the photographs are to
convey a fairly unambiguous and straightforward surface meaning, i.e.
"that's a picture of a fish robbing a bank", rather than "that's a picture
of some indistinct blobs of light".

Possible alternative interpretation: they opened an art book to a random
page, threw darts at the page, then incorporated whatever words or phrases
the darts hit into a sentence! :-)  :-)

John R


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