P3D Re: Shaking the norm?... Yeah, sure!

[boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Boris Starosta)]

>From: "Dr. George A. Themelis" <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
...
>And then Boris comes and talks about HIS alternative content images!
>Ha, ha, ha!!!  Give me a break! :-)  I just came back for Detroit.
....
>light and a bunch of hands flashed all around her.  Plus, he got ALL
>acceptances.  Best record than anybody else.  And it is not just Detroit.
>Exhibition after exhibition, Boris is rounding up all the awards.
>
>So who is shaking what norm?  The guy (Boris) is being accepted with
>open arms by the stereo photographic establishment!!!! :-)  They
>love his work!  Come on Boris!  You can do better than that!!!  Show
>us some really disturbing images.  Get zero acceptances from the
>establishment.  Only then you will be a real ARTIST!!! :-) :-)

Real ARTISTS don't have to be fools.  I'm through with all that!

George, I can see the twinkle in your eye, and I appreciate your friendly
ribbing.  But you make the unwarranted assumption that it is my
"alternative content" images winning those awards.  Let me tell you a
little secret:  I'm not sending my best work (the ART-work, that is) to
these exhibitions.  Why?  You already know the answer - I'm not going to
waste my time.

But that doesn't mean I don't want to exhibit my best work.  No. To see the
ART-work, you must come to MY exhibition, currently showing here in
Charlottesville.  The PSA would have none of it, believe me.  Or you could
go to the EXPLORA museum in Frankfurt, which just bought five of my
anaglyph prints for their collection; or the SternStunde gallery in
Bielefeld, which is now selling my erotic prints and slides.  Before the
year is out, I will have put these new works on my website as well.

Don't misunderstand.  I'm proud of winning the PSA awards this year.  I'm
proud of the images that are taking the awards.  That's because these are
images that I meticulously crafted to favorably impress PSA judges (some of
the judges), as I've come to discover what the PSA is all about these past
two years.

But even more importantly, these images do go beyond the PSA norm.  As I'm
fond of saying in my catalog: "no animals, flowers, or scenics!"  I think
even you will agree that it is unusual to gain a high PSA award on an image
that does not focus on one of these three themes.(1)  <Point to ponder: my
most successful image, the Pixie, DOES show, in its own unique way,
animals, flowers, and a scenic!>  So please, acknowledge that I am shaking
up the PSA just a little bit (just about as much as they can handle); and
you have to admit, you can't shake them up with rejections.  Nobody sees
those!

Another point to ponder: the only image of mine (almost) submitted this
year to PSA exhibitions, to several exhibitions, that has been rejected
(almost universally), is Shooting SURPRISE
(http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase/iphanto.html).  Had I not stubbornly
kept submitting this image to the salons, because I like it so much, I
would be batting .999 this year on acceptances.  But this image goes over
people's heads, I'm afraid.  I believe most judges don't understand it.
One told me that they never realized that was a PRINT on the floor in the
studio with me - they thought I just pasted the anaglyph girl into the
slide digitally (the effect is so convincing).  Shooting SURPRISE is not
really a work of art anyway, just a technical demonstration with a little
humor thrown in...  but it taught me the limits of the PSA judging
apparatus.

Cheers,

Boris

(1) No disrespect for shooters of animals, flowers, and scenics.  These
just don't interest me quite as much as an artist (although I do like any
good photograph, especially a very good landscape, such as Lam Yee Chung's
"Morning Light," which got the PSA gold for pictorial color prints at
Wichita last year).




Faraday was asked first by Queen Victoria of what use electricity was, and
replied that the question might similarly be asked of an infant; someday,
it would become an adult and then the answer would be known.

Boris Starosta            boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx
                          http://www.starosta.com
usa 804 979 3930          http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase