Photography: A Hands On Artform
I’ve heard a lot of arguments against photography as an art form. One of my least favorites is “all you do is push a button! How is that art?” Well, plebeian, I’d be happy to explain that to you, if you’d allow me.
Being a photographer isn’t just b
eing a person with a camera. Everyone has a camera these days. Everyone has a dozen photos of their cat or their own face or their cars. This isn’t what makes a photographer. What makes a photographer is the awareness of taking the photograph. Lining up the frame and having an awareness of self and timing and waiting for just that perfect moment or for the light to move or the leaf to fall. Photography is a lot about waiting, but it’s also about being proactive. For example: take this image. (Ringing Rocks Cliff)
Obviously, this isn’t a shot a person can take from anywhere. A hike is involved, a friend who is crazy enough to sit on the edge of a 30 foot drop is needed, and your own crazy self needs to climb up on a boulder that’s slick from the water kicking off a waterfall and your boyfriend is grabbing onto the back of your pants because, “You literally just said you could have majored in falling down! No I’m not letting go!”
Photography is a lot of sitting and waiting and a lot of sitting in front of a computer these days. I personally do a lot of editing there, especially since I shoot digital. But I never feel “hands off”. Sometimes “hands on” can be as simple as making decisions. Choosing to depart from your comfort zone and step out of yourself to make something incredible is why I do what I do. I want an opportunity to make some incredible art, I need to travel to that opportunity, whether it’s down the road to a studio or up a mountain. Being able to work out an exposure problem or a flash connection issue while I’m on the side of a cliff isn’t a problem all photographers face, and I understand that. However, there’s something ultimately rewarding about fixing issues like this on the fly. Knowing my equipment like an extension of my own body is part of being an artist. I know a painter who feels the same way about his brushes, a dancer who feels this way about her shoes.
Photography has always been seen as a way to distance yourself from situations. War photographers speak about using their cameras as ways to remove themselves from the horrors of reality, and instead focus on the viewfinder. I disagree. I have always found that documenting an event, person, or object makes it stand out ever clearer in my mind and memory. Photography is as hands on as it is eye opening. The litany of choices you have to make in order to create one single frame can take hours. Today’s “shutterbug” mentality puts a haze over how photography is viewed. Taking a million photos doesn’t make you a photographer. Obsessing over details and doing something kinda crazy just to get that one shot? That’s more like it.
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Caitlin Spiess is a photographer and writer from Bucks County, PA who holds a B.S. in Fine Art Photography from Hofstra University. When not having an existential crisis about her legacy, she’s either photographing her cats or searching for her next project. You can find more of her work at www.ill-productions.com.
Politics & Poetry
We’re starting something new here at HOOT, which is getting the inside perspective from artists that we admire. This includes their artistic vision for one of their pieces, a critical response – or close read – of a work of art, and how different artists approach their medium. We’re starting with the brilliant Alex Simand, who you’ll hopefully be seeing a lot of in the future. He details the thought and POV behind his poem dealing with the recent Brexit.
Artist Statement:
The world appears to be tearing at the seams. Driven by populist sentiment, once-celebrated progress in the realm of global citizenship, pluralism, and multiculturalism has revealed deep schisms in societies around the world and a ubiquitous form of xenophobia that is, at times, inexplicable. We know this implicitly here in the US, thanks to the presidential campaign of [redacted], but it’s with the utmost terror that I observe the widespread nature of a fear undeniably rooted in white supremacy and colonialism. Britain has voted to leave the European Union. Let’s take back control, goes the pithy refrain from the separatists. The sentiment strikes me as infantile, in the truest sense. The same nation that once boasted of the sheer size of its sprawling empire has become afraid of meddling newcomers. Though I try to empathize with any point of view, this movement towards sequestration makes me imagine a small boy gripping his blue and red rubber ball and yelling mine at passersby, though no one has ever threatened to take it from him. And so this is the image I play with in my poem, Brexit Strategy.
Brexit Strategy
Brackish child broods in sandbox
his pail
his shovel
draws a line in white, brazen,
defiant as duck-billed platypus—
he browsed
the brown skinned kids,
brought them home,
branded them British,
but playtime is over,
he says
he built this—him!—
brick by brick
though he is a child
outgrown his britches
full
of bangers and mash
and the kind of certainty
that murders babies in brambles
Mine, says child, brine-sour,
folded in a hole he dug
in the seventies—
a bronchial mist settles in,
the cold hug of absent mother:
polite disappointment
in her crown,
but child brackets his purview
with moats that tear his fingernails,
imported crocodiles with toupees
and elaborate insults
he is brusque and serious
when he says, breathless,
we are closed for business,
who’s laughing now?
but nobody gets the joke
when he burns the bridge
Alex Simand holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. He writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in Red Fez, Mudseason Review, Five2One Magazine, Angel City Review, Drunk Monkeys, and others. Alex is the former Blog Editor for Lunch Ticket and past Editor of Creative Nonfiction and Diana Woods Memorial Prize. Find him online at www.alexsimand.com or on Twitter at @AlexSimand.
They say it’s your birthday. It’s my birthday too, yeah.
Four! It’s a magic number. Yes it is. It’s a magic number.
Because it’s our fourth birthday today.
It doesn’t seem entirely fathomable that we’ve been doling out zest-infused literary postcards to you for four whole years. If HOOT was a person it would have already mastered the beginnings of language acquisition (and then on its way to submitting us some thought provoking flash fiction or poetry).
From our first postcard to our most current, we’ve delighted in offering up quality literature in surprising and innovative ways. And throughout the years our small team of dedicated lit nerds has had the honor of discussing our lust for awesome words from coast to coast.
And we want our fourth year to be the most boss yet. Any ol’ magazine can celebrate a five year anniversary, we want to celebrate our four year instead. That means doing special and surprising things such as creating an apocalypse theme postcard anthology, or re-interpreting a vintage issue, and of course updating our online issue (and tons more).
But mostly, we want to thank all of you for hanging out with us while we explore the world of flash fiction and single issue poetry. There is no way that we would be where we are now without the support of our readers, contributors, subscribers, and well-wishers.
To four more years, and to forty more years, and to four hundred more years: we look forward to sending you the ultimate bite-sized literature forevermore.
What HOOT did on our summer vacation
Now that everyone is back at school, it would probably be a good time to let you know what we were up to on our summer vacation. HOOT packed their satchels and flew over to the great state of Massachusetts to teach a seminar on writing flash fiction to the brilliant BIMA students studying at Brandeis University.
Not only were the students charming and brainy, they were also creative and wonderful. Check out their interpretations of HOOT, and the mini HOOTs that they made. We’re so honored and delighted to have taught there, and we know that these writers have amazing things waiting for them in the future.
by Anital Dayanim
Pictured Pause Winners
The Monologging and HOOT contest has come to a close (see here for reminders on what I’m blabbing about). We were extremely impressed with the great submissions we saw during the springtime competition, and love the final results.
This is just a brief sample of the lovely work that won the Pictured Pause contest:
Check out the lucky winners, and the gorgeous accompanying art at the Monologging website (here).
