In The Frame: Sunday Dispatch, 2-26-2023

Keep making art in order to be allowed to keep making art.

Phoenix, Arizona.

In a recent mentor group meeting, one of the members noted they were feeling anxious and on edge and made the analogy to “long covid” which is what happens to some who have had the unfortunate luck to get it.

I had it. It took me weeks to get my brain working at capacity again. Many weeks.

And perhaps Mark was closer to the truth than he thought. I have noticed a sad decline in interest in many things that were going great in 2019.

Blog comments are nearly impossible to get. Twitter is becoming less of a cesspool, but a cesspool it remains. IG is becoming boring. Facebook is a bit less joyful, and people are tiptoeing around like they are afraid of the next… whatever.

Add to that the fear-porn mongers of “AI is going to eliminate you”, and “there is no hope”, and “we’re all gonna diiiiiiiiie….”

You know, like this guy:

Yeah, psycho dude, it may be better for you to sit this one out.

We are artists. We make order out of chaos.

Whether it is the written word, paints, music, or any sort of art, the artist puts it into a context where it can be understood - if even to only themselves.

We look and strive for order, even though it may seem strange to others when they see what we come up with.

When the camera goes in front of our faces, we want to put what we want in the frame before us. This is why we spend so much time learning and getting better at composition.

And now we live in a chaotic world.

Institutions that were once trusted to give us order have, one after another, failed. Trust in every part of our society has been eroded by the incessant lying of nearly everyone in charge of nearly everything.

And that is hard for artists, and probably most regular folk, to live with.

But it is exactly why we must continue to create. We must turn our backs to the naysayers, ignore the wretched gatekeepers, and mock those who have failed us by making more and more and more art.

There simply is no other way.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Henry David Thoreau said that.

And Grammerly doesn’t like it. It wants to ‘fix’ the quote to be …‘canvas for our’… instead of how it was written by a great author.

Because “rules”.

Rules and chaos. Great companions and the enemy of all that is creative.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” 
–Maya Angelou

She’s right, of course.

And we need to use up more of our creativity in order to get even more. Stagnation equals death in art, and there is too damn much stagnation going on out there.

Complacency is stagnation on life support.

We all need to shake off the complacency, get mad about how art is being treated, and fight back a bit. Or even a lot.

The people we thought would help us maintain our artistic integrity have, for the most part, abandoned us in order to maintain their tech-bro lifestyles.

A website called ArtStation has been battling its own users over the use of Stable Diffusion imagery being allowed to mix with their art. ArtStation could easily add a “This is made by AI” tag to AI output, but they are siding with the perveyors of this stuff over the real makers of art.

Sad, but the artists are fighting back.

Hard.

“Artists should be free to decide how their art is used and we don’t want to become a gatekeeper, with site terms that stifle AI research and commercialization,” ArtStation wrote on its “Use of A.I. Software” page. “Choosing not to use the tag leaves copyright law to govern whether or not the artwork was fairly used.”
— ArtStation

Artists fight back against the destruction of the meaning of artist.

These platforms, which never did honestly care about artists or art, will give way to platforms that are explicitly non-AI use. And this is actually going to be good for our work, and how we make a living.

On Friday, February 24, the US Copyright office won the right to ban copyright on AI-created imagery. This is terrific news. And a really big deal.

Their argument is that the only art that can be copyrighted is that which is human-created. Sorry, “Sydney”, you gotta get real first.

Any “art” you see that you like and was created by AI may now be available for you to simply snatch and use. The work is not copyrighted, and cannot be trademarked because of the lack of copyright.

PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT ADVOCATING FOR ANYONE TO DO THIS.

I am pointing out that this will deter a lot of commercial applications, as well as fine art and even editorial use.

So, no, we have a bit more time coming to us.

Now we have to take it and make photographs as often and as much as we can.

We have a sort of duty, you see, to perpetuate human-made art before ol’ ‘Sydney’ takes over the court system and gives herself a reprieve. Sydney is the name of Google’s AI machine. And if that is interesting, know this: it doesn’t like the name.

Yesterday (February 25, 2023) my bud Jerry and I walked around the Roosevelt area of downtown Phoenix. And we made photographs of the area that gave me a real smile. None of them are going to be lifetime achievement imagery, and that’s OK. I made something. I made at least four images that I really like.

That is the only way we can create order from chaos, folks. Take your camera and make some images tomorrow. Anything. It’s all good.

YOU made it, and YOU get to claim the work as your very own.

And nothing and nobody can take that work from you.

Share with me what you make this week. Just post a note and tell me, “I made 30 photos, Don.” Or perhaps, “I finally started my Blurb book this week.”

That is the way we fight for the right to make our own art - and share it with the world.

BTW, here is one of the images from yesterday.

Cactus along the sidewalk, Phoenix, Arizona.

See ya’ll next week.

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THIS WEEK’S PHOTOGRAPHS

From top left: Ryan McGehee, Derrick Rose, Joe Cosentino, Carmen Blike.

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BOOKS:

“This lavish volume features nearly two hundred reproductions of Smith’s images—many that have never before been published—and weaves together a biocritical essay by Getty Museum curator Paul Martineau and a technical assessment of Smith’s production by the Center for Creative Photography’s chief curator, Rebecca A. Senf. It maps Smith’s creative trajectory—including his introduction to photography, early personal projects, teaching, commissioned pieces, and career in fashion—and provides insight into his personal life and character, contextualizing his work and creative tendencies within his privileged but lonely upbringing and complex emotional and psychological makeup. Rodney Smith is the definitive record of the life’s work and worldview of a truly original artist.” — Amazon

I think Rodney Smith was one of the best photographers of the modern era. His work is incredibly fresh, always interesting, and with an aesthetic that simply cannot be matched. No one can copy this artist’s work.

I ordered my copy the day I heard about it. This will undoubtedly be a collector’s item, and I suggest you take a look. Especially if you love black and white, fashion, and portraiture.

Available for pre-order on Amazon

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I hope you are enjoying these posts, and I would love to hear from you. Questions are great. Comments (good or bad) are welcome.

If anyone is up for a Fall Workshop in Wyoming, let me know. Putting some ideas together now.