Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Michael Czeiszperger <michael AT czeiszperger.org>]

If you will excuse a little self-promotion, the Open Eye in Carrboro  
will be featuring some of my photographs through the month of April.   
Due to scheduling conflicts the "opening" will be on Sunday, April  
15th from 3-5PM.  If you saw the photos in Market Street Books last  
year, only about half of these photos are new, but I figured the Open  
Eye would have a different clientele than last year's venue, so it  
wouldn't matter that much.

I hope you can make it! (And forward this email to anyone who might  
be interested.)

Thanks,

--Michael


Artist's Bio:

Stephen King wrote that “Most of what writers write about their work  
is ill-informed bullshit”, and despite my lack of qualifications in  
the world of photography, I will offer the opinion that the same goes  
for photographers. For example, go to a photography exhibit in any  
museum in the country, read the descriptions, and try to figure out  
what exactly what the words mean.  For example, a giant close up of a  
hand holding a slab of raw pork might be described as “exploring the  
relationship between structure and tactile sensation.”

We learn that what looks to be a poorly-lit picture of a nude woman  
in a doorway should be “viewed intertexturally as contained by the  
boundaries of genre formation.”  Perhaps it is a layman’s conceit ,  
but I believe there is a line that is crossed when the photograph  
fails to be of interest by itself, and is only made relevant through  
pages of explanation.

This skepticism towards fine-art photography has its roots in my  
experiences as an avant-garde music composer as a young man.  In  
college, despite being an engineering major, I actively composed and  
performed music at Music School events, and was even chosen by the  
school to receive a composition commission. There was a piano in the  
lobby of the school of music, and one afternoon a interesting-looking  
man was performing what appeared to be a new avant-garde composition,  
and he had attracted a crowd of listeners.  After talking with the  
man, however, it was apparent he wasn’t part of the new music scene  
at all, but rather was simply a homeless person who was trying to  
pass the time somewhere  warm.  The only difference between his music  
and the music of any number of avant-garde composers was the  
accompanying text.

My main interest in photography is portraiture, a popular theme since  
the invention of the medium. Photography stands out among visual art  
forms in its sheer popularity; the number of people taking pictures  
of each other is a large percentage of the population, dwarfing the  
number of individuals who paint or sculpt or create anything else  
you’d see on exhibit. It is strange to me that pictures of ordinary  
people, one of the most common things in the world, should be  
considered a worthy subject to look at outside of one’s own family,  
and yet somehow people are exorably drawn to look at each other.

The most common description of a good portrait is it reveals  
something unique about the subject, and although I love portraiture,  
in my opinion the ability of a picture to reveal anything unique  
about a subject is quite limited. People are simply too complex to be  
reduced to a single capture of light. My approach is the opposite in  
that I specifically look for those elements of the subject which are  
not unique, but rather are iconic and universal, and it is this  
quality which enables the viewer to more easily relate to the subject.

For example, when I take a picture of a boy picking out a worm for  
fishing, the intent is not to just capture the propensity of this  
particular boy to get his hands dirty, but rather to remind adults of  
their carefree summers spent fishing with friends and brothers and  
parents, so that the viewer can relate to the subject through their  
own experiences. Of course, this approach can easily lead to cliche,  
but cliche is all too easy with any approach to photography given the  
sheer millions of people taking pictures with almost the same equipment.

You'll notice that few of my pictures have titles. The main reason  
for that is I want each viewer to have the opportunity to react in  
their own way without being told how to feel. Adding a title becomes  
a game where the viewer glances at an image, reads the title, and  
then tries to "get it", as if the picture is a test question with  
only one answer.

For example, if you look at a picture of a bawling child, imagine the  
changes in your emotional response if the title was "Dropped Candy"  
vs. "Grandparent Died". In both cases the image is exactly the same,  
but our reactions and emotions are not. The logical extension of  
having a title is adding a narrative, which is the purview of  
photojournalism, and while there is an art to telling a story with  
pictures, that is the opposite of what I do. My goal is to have each  
picture survive on its own visual merits without having to rely on  
any one context.

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Michael Czeiszperger Photography
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
http://learningtosee.org  | 919-619-0607