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INTRODUCTION

This is the tenth issue of Can Boreal, a pamphlet devotedto Visual poetry, Concrete poetry, Asemic poetry, abstractdraws, Le erism, Experimental poetry, orthodox poetry,altered texts, prose, collages And anything else I mightfeel like enclosing in an unsuspected future.

Can Boreal is an anagram of Barcelona, the city whereI live (survive). It means dog from the north. Dog isanagram of God. There is no God, but plenty of straydogs. Or so is what I think.

Dogs are poe c. Men are poe c. Life, in general, is poe c.Tragically. Art is a way to kill me. A sort of preven vemurder, if you want, as me will take its revenge upon usand we will not leave this planet alive.

Poetry shows a desperate a achment to life. A lovefor life. So, killing me while making poetry (or art ingeneral) is one of those things rather difficult to explainin a ra onal way. From a distance, it might appear to belike the howling of the wolves to the full moon. One couldsay: Stop howling and enjoy life! But, I guess it is notthat simple.

This issue is devoted to photography.

I just want to thank Mike Dickau, Kazunori Murakami,Derek Pell, Tom Nelson, Jessy Kendall and Darlene Altschulfor joining me in this photography-project. We all hopethat the recipients of this new issue of Can Boreal willenjoy the ar s c stuff.

For the edi ng of this issue, I counted on the invaluablehelp of Darlene Altschul.

John MountainSeptember 2010

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PHOTOGRAPHY

Someone said (an Englishmen whose name I cannot recall rightnow) photography was not Art (or cra) but magic, meaning thatit had a specic idiosyncrasy which made it different from anyother ar s c discipline. This referred to the fact the technique useslight, the light bounced back from reality itself, to produce xed andstable images upon a matrix. So, even if we should alter, manipulateor totally distort the matrix (or the prints derived from it), thefounda on of the image will always be reality itself. One can argue

that in Art, generally speaking, reality is always the primal ma er.Maybe so, but in the case of photography, this happens in a veryliteral way.

Photography is a technique to document reality which has no similarhistoric precedent. This has produced a conceptual burden uponthe system as language system. Photography has found employin many different elds (architecture, journalism, criminology, etc.).

In fact, photography as a source for art-expression (as a method forself-expression) is a fairly recent u lity of the technique.

Many painters became photographers in the second half of the 19 th century. But, those ar sts who con nued pain ng aer the erup onof photography also were inuenced (or assisted) by it in many ways.In fact, the camera obscura was extensively used, previous to theinven on of photography, by several painters such as Vermeer and

Leonardo da Vinci.

From the very orthodox methods of the rst decades of the 20 th century, when photography was considered a new Art togetherwith cinema, to the present me of digital-photography, this crahas suffered a few conceptual altera ons which might be subtle tothe eye of the profane, but ma ers quite as much as the scien cones in commanding the evolu on of the technique.

Two main factors determine what photography is today, as opposedto what it was in the last decades of the 20 th century: Digital Photography and the computers image-soware (Photoshop andother similar programs of digital image treatment).Digital Photography has altered the way people (both professionalsand acionados) take pictures because the produc on cost (related

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to lm) has been totally eliminated. The images are not engravedupon costly chemical matrixes, but have become mere computermemory. Memory which can be reused and which abstract natureturns into a cost-free primal ma er source of images, has affectedhow we shoot, how oen we shoot and how much we shoot.How do we shoot? We shoot faster and we think less about theimage we want to produce. How oen? Very oen: We take photoscon nuously because, unless we print, the cost is nil. We have acamera built into our cell-phone, so we carry a camera 24/7. Howmuch do we shoot? Lots more than ever: Again, the cost is nil andwe take photos of both trivial situa ons and of important events.Possibly, this no cost factor has inuenced in a higher degree thephotographic ac vity of the acionados than the professionals.The second factor which determines what is photography today isthe digital nature of the images, which favors to increase the image-manipula on with the computer. Professional photography goestogether with computer soware, interacts with the computer, inthe same way that it used manual re-touch a few years ago. So, theresult is always a certain amount of transforma on (whether itis mere enhancement or evident muta on). Consequently, theinforma on-le gets enriched (or simply altered ) in the process,which means the document provided by photography is no longer the one given by the real world, in a sort of raw state. But, that itis a mediated one, a culture-mediated world, an improved look of what we assume as reality.

Digital Photography has changed the concep on of photographicimage. Previously, it was synonymous to truth, now it is not so.

Computer altera ons are omnipresent and are oen difficult toiden fy by the average viewer, who -nevertheless- is aware of thepossible muta on. This fact sits in the back of the head of both thear st and the public and it raises suspiciousness, so nothing is takenfor granted anymore. This has been altering quite a lot the way ar stsrelate to the technique. From a rather classic approach (in image-concept and image-composi on) of the ar sts/photographers of the rst half of the 20 th century towards a new use of photographyin merely documen ng Process Art and in photography as acomplementary source in mixed-media processes of collage, etching,pain ng, computer-generated image, etc.

Today, ar sts who use photography to express themselves canrelate to the technique from a spectrum of choices which is much

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wider than ever before. From a Spartan and simplis c use of

the technique, avoiding all image-treatment and all manipula onof the informa on provided by the image-capture, to a highlymanipula ve control and altera on of the image by both means of the computer and the manual work (by mixed media). So, if the 20 th centurys ar s c scene was dominated by photography as documentand as a quite orthodox (conceptually speaking) new source forar s c images, this rst decade of the 21rst century has opened adoor towards a new concep on of photography which crossbreeds

with manual ar s c techniques and looks for new meanings. I sayNew meanings possibly because nothing seems to hold any truemeaning anymore.

I was myself a professional photographer for a long me. I workedin many elds of commercial photography. From shoo ng 20 rolls of lm per day to tourists in the streets of a holidays resort, to product-

photo in the studio, through fashion-shows, books for models,

etc. This le me with a sort of allergy towards photography andunable to use photography as the main method for my ar s c self-expression. However, I must admit that I have been constantly usingphotography as a collateral tool for producing pain ngs, etchings,drawings, computer-generated graphics, etc.

I felt the need to stop using photography as a way of expressingmyself. I wanted to avoid the orthodoxy of what now gets labeledas ar s c photography. I wanted to be able to use the techniquewith a new mentality. Yes, Im referring to a paradigm shi, to acompletely new concep on of it.I may not have reached my goal, yet, but I will keep on trying.

John MountainAugust 2010

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59 Pon ac Bonneville Darlene Altschul

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Kitchen Drawer Darlene Altschul

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Mask Darlene Altschul

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Scissor Darlene Altschul

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Leaves Tom Nelson

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Leaves 2 Tom Nelson

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Moonflower Tom Nelson

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Salt & Pepper Tom Nelson

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Pub Tom Nelson

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NYC Tom Nelson

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Crayons Tom Nelson

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Old Shoes Tom Nelson

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Tears Tom Nelson

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Tree Tom Nelson

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INDEX

Introduc on ........................................ Page 3

Photography ........................................... 4

Darlene Altschul ..................................... 7

Mike Dickau ........................................... 23

Jessy Kendall .......................................... 43

John Mountain ....................................... 58

Kaz Murakami ........................................ 82

Tom Nelson ............................................ 106

Derek Pell ............................................... 116

Index ...................................................... 131

Credits .................................................... 132

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CREDITS

Introduc on text John Mountain 2010

Pdf by DKA - October 2010

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