'The best way to do something creative..

..is to ask a question you don't know the answer to...'
Francis Ford Coppola, in an interview I read a while ago, I think it was in Time magazine.
I think this is a REALLY good thought...!



A combination of 'positive' space - the pinnacle of rock on the left..
combined with a jagged opening/negative space, extending from the lower right,
to the left of center at the top.
Both negatives made at the beach in Bandon, Oregon a few years ago.
I figured I would overlay some sky on the top 2/3rd's, and have to find another image to flesh out the bottom right. Guess it was my lucky day, 'cause when I found the right sky for the top, it also had some puffy cumulus clouds that blended right in with the rocks fading in from the bottom left...
and made the 'space' as a whole even more ambiguous.

Where is the horizon here?
At the left, it is defined...
but on the right? ..that's another matter, 'who knows'..

Another thought:
Just because I 'ask a question I don't know the answer to' doesn't mean that when I get an 'answer'
(in the form of an image) that I'll actually understand that, either.
Which is definitely the case, on this one.

As usual, I start w/ 3 or 4 prints, & once I get one that's a keeper of the basic image, I feel free to improvise, and add other elements. In this case, I did 4 - and I got a basic final w/ #2 & 3... so #4 was up in the air....... since this had become such an uncertain place, I decided to add the image of a figure, walking along a narrow strip of rock stretching through ocean waves, and tide pool, that I took at the Sutro Bath House ruins below Cliff House, in S.F.

Once the figure was added, it was no longer just a mysterious space... it was about a 'perilous journey'...


As usual, larger images at:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_DkRm_11_08/MysteriousSpace.html

This is the last post of the year...
and it's been a wild & crazy year hasn't it?
I am reminded again of a song recorded almost 40 years ago by The Rolling Stones, called 'Gimme Shelter'.
It was scary and all too true then, and I wish it would have become less true as the years roll on,
but it hasn't.
That's even more scary.

"...Oooo, storm is threatening my very life today..."

"War, children, it's just a shot away..
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away..."
(on the other hand)
"Love, sister, it's just a kiss away"

If you haven't heard this track for a while,
here's a reminder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMnES7WoT4
The Stones, the recorded/studio version, w/ a lot of rather generic photos of the band...
but you can hear it again, in one click, without having to reach for the vinyl, the cassette, or the CD :-)

If you don't have it in any of these forms, well...uh... I respectfully suggest you 'refresh' your music collection.

If there is any other thought I might add to your holiday/year-end ruminations, this is it:
www.bobbennettphoto.net/Xmas2k/index.html

Have a great holiday!!!......see you next year...

Play me some of that ol' time mountain music...

It's another music player of some sort (at the bottom of the montage image) - the holes in the disc get translated into musical notes.
(At least that's what I think it is.)
It's a disc that you won't find it at Apple, Microsoft, Seagate, that's for sure.
It was also shot at the Musee Mechanique in S.F., at Cliff House, before it was moved.
(See the previous post for links to the M.M.)

It's dodged out to '0' by the middle of the image.
At the top, is a landscape shot at Joshua Tree Nat'l Park - just rocks and sky...
but the rocks have very strong vertical 'grooves' in them.
How they came to be this way, I have no idea - consult a geology expert, if you want a professional answer.
My own personal opinion is... that what we now see as desert?... has been shaped by water, lots and lots of water, & was once much greener... and a whole lot of weathering has gone on, for many hundreds of thousands of years.

The neg that tied it all together was of a root of beach grass that exposed by the elements, and was left to waver back and forth over the sand, and carve these 'grooves'...







This connects the grooves in the rocks, with the disc player at the bottom.
To my eye, anyway...
Since this landscape was the last exposure added, I tried 2 variations.

Larger images are at:

www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_DkRm_07_08/MtnMusic.html

I still feel much the same as I did 20+ years ago, about creating these images, which I've written about in the statement on my website:

"It starts by YOU telling the picture what it will be -- in the end, THE PICTURE tells you what IT will be..."
(Robert Rauschenberg)

I'm obviously interested in things metaphysical - beyond that, it's up to the viewer to decide what's going on.
If I haven't figured them out yet, (and I haven't, not *really*), why should I presume to explain them to anyone else? Many of the pictures just seem to 'happen', because the individual negatives are 'looking' for each other.
I'm just a chaperone, and a really loose one at that......
(...But those were always the best kind of parties, right?)

#1 - I'm surprised that anything I wrote, said, or did that long ago still rings true for me.

#2 - This makes me a surrealist, so far as I can tell.

I'll save you the google search, here's some appropriate links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Breton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealist_Manifesto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_psychic_automatism

Time for one more post before the holidays hit, and then I'm taking some much deserved time away from
anything resembling the 'usual routine' - my plan at the moment is to go to ..."Vegas, Baby!"
But not for anything 'vegas' and glitzy - there's lot of interesting land and parks within an hour or two drive northeast...