Monthly Archives: May 2014

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Twitter and Tumblr

Hairy Beast is on twitter at @hairycritter and on Tumblr at indivisiblehairybeast.tumblr.com.1

We haven’t pinned down exactly how we’re going to use those accounts, but here’s the game plan for now:

  • We’re using the tumblr account to reblog content, which will then be copied over to hairybeast.net using IFTTT. We’re not planning to use the tumblr to post new content indendependant of the wordpress blog at hairybeast.net. We love tumblr, but one of the lessons of 1/125 is that tumblr can be a maddening place to publish, organize, and maintain content.
  • The twitter account isn’t currently doing too much. I’ve got it set in IFTTT to tweet with links to new posts (for those who for prefer following a twitter account to using RSS).
  1. No, we couldn’t get @hairybeast or hairybeast.tumblr.com. We also don’t have hairybeast.com, and I cannot recommend googling “Hairy Beast” unless you’re a hirsute dude enthsusiast. A sensible blogger would probably have chosen a different name. ↩
Campbell_FakedMissileStacked
thinking about photographs

credibility & integrity vs. objectivity & truth

2 Comments

Faked Iranian missile test photo, via Fourandsix.com

if we can shift the grounds of the debate so that we recognise all photography is an interpretation and representation, we can think about the issues of manipulation in terms of their impact on what we want certain images to do, the work they perform for us, and the effects we desire them to have. To my mind that would be a much more productive discussion.

(via What are the current standards relating to the manipulation of photographs? A discussion at the World Press Photo Awards Days 2014)

This is a very interesting post. I’m typically skeptical about strict rules about photographic manipulation. The examples Campbell shows really drive home the point about how silly some of the rules are. I really like where he takes this though. An unmanipulated photograph can most certainly lie and be unethical and lack integrity. It’s usually not the manipulations which determine any of that.

John Baldessari, Wrong.
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Greetings from @vossbrink

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain.
Marcel Duchamp, Fountain.
Edward Weston, Excusado.
Edward Weston, Excusado.

A quick introduction post since while @kukkurovaca is sort of driving this blog, part of the point here is that @kalli and I will be going in whatever direction we feel like as well. For my part, I tend to try and write about photography by referencing how it fits in with history in general as well as non-photographic art media.

I love seeing museum exhibitions where photography, paintings, sculpture, etc. are in the same room, in conversation with each other. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually seen this.  Which means I’m always on the lookout to post anything which can do this—e.g. comparing Duchamp’s Fountain to Weston’s Excusado and realizing how much they had in common (beyond just subject matter) in exploring the forms and textures of the mechanical age.

The same goes with history. @kukkurovaca and I are both constantly annoyed by how so many of the same arguments about photography come up over and over again without any awareness of how similar things have been written decades or centuries ago. We’ll both be trying to add some of that historical perspective here., even if it means referencing Baldessari’s Wrong over and over and over again.

Most of my big posts here will be crossposts from NJWV and, as a result, contain a number of links to previous material I’ve written there. I will have smaller Hairy Beast-specific posts. I may also have more personal photography posts on NJWV—plus all the other random non-photography stuff I write about—which will not appear here.