Kraus 1968
A book of photographs
Introduction
Kraus is an accordion-fold hand-bound book which contains thirty-six 5x7" silver gelatin black & white photographs made in Chicago in 1967--1968 in fulfillment of the Senior Visual Thesis requirement in the Photography Area of the Art Department at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.
The page size is 10 x 11.5" and there are are 25 double-page spreads in the book , some with an image on both of the facing pages, others contain only one image, either on the left page or the right.
I have selected 12 images from the book and presented them below in six sets of paired images. The pairs are not necessarily taken directly from the book; my intention here is to give you an overall feeling for the project. The juxtaposition of images I have presented, however, will provide you with a good sense of how I have juxtaposed and sequenced the 36 images throughout the book.
The space between the images is a dynamic aspect of the book experience. In the interaction between the images--either those facing each other, or following each other sequentially as you flip through the pages--new "subtle" images are born within the mind or imagination of the viewer. Even blank pages are important spaces potentially fillable with Imaginal material generated by the overall sequential development of the 36 photographs.
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Kraus is about many things for me. After the presentation of selected images from the book I will offer eight brief commentaries addressing particular areas of interest and concern.
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Kraus
12 Selected Photographs
1, 2
3, 4
7, 8
9, 1 0
11, 12
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Commentaries
2) A Visual Love Poem ~ Kraus was inspired by my blossoming relationship to Gloria Meleo in late 1967 through the spring of 1968 in Chicago. (See Image #9 below)
Gloria's sister Phyllis and my best friend Jim Erwin married in the spring of 1968. When Jim and Phyllis left Rochester for Chicago to go to graduate school at the Institute of Design after marrying, I decided to leave Rochester too. I felt I had gotten all that I could get from Rochester, the city, and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Minor White had left RIT to teach at MIT, and I had studied two years with Nathan Lyons in his Home Workshop. So, I too felt it would be interesting to live in Chicago and study with Aaron Siskind.
I was accepted into the photography program at the Institute of Design in the spring of 1987. Gloria visited Phyllis and Jim a few times in Chicago and we began to develop a relationship that gradually intensified by the time I graduated from the Institute of Design in the spring of 1968. So the photographs in Kraus are a lot about my longing to be with Gloria, to know her better.
In the fall of 1968 Gloria had planned to go to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study art, so I decided to move to New York City, to live and work there for a while so I could spend more time with Gloria. By the summer of 1969 Gloria and I had decided to marry and move to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I was offered a Full Teaching Fellowship in Photography. Gloria pursued her undergraduate art study in New Mexico with an emphasis in ceramics. (See my blog page: Snapshots : Stories of My Life In Photography and Teaching.)
3) The Vietnam War ~ Kraus was created during the last phase of the Vietnam War. There was a growing consciousness among young people like myself that the war was a sham and a travesty. The draft board was after me and it threatened to deny my growing relationship with Gloria. I did everything I could do to avoid getting drafted. After three physical exams--the first two were in Chicago, the last one was in New York City--the draft board finally recognized my physical situation and gave me a 4F classification. Many of the photographs in Kraus are about my anger and anxiety about the war, about being drafted, about mu fear of loosing my relationship with Gloria and my country. Fortunately it all worked out well for me and Gloria.
4) About the Title ~ The title of the book, Kraus came from Gloria; she mentioned it to me one day while talking about a book she had read for a Russian literature course. She said the word Kraus meant something like "Young Love," or "The Spring of Love." I have tried to find the word on the internet but could not locate the word. But now you know what the title means, at least, to me.
5) A Music Inspired Project ~ Kraus is probably the earliest of my many photography projects which were inspired by music. (See my blog page Music Inspired Photography Projects.) The sequence of the images, the use of blank pages, and the recurrence of certain images within the book's overall structure was inspired by the music of Richard Wagner, especially his Ring Cycle, and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past).
I became fascinated by Wagner's Ring Cycle while taking a wonderfully taught European Literature course at the Institute of Design. The teacher was a Wagner fan who had traveled the world many times to hear the complete Ring Cycle. He played the piano for us in class to teach us about Wagner's use of leitmotiv in the Ring and in the literature he had been having us read, including Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and many others.
I listened to Wagner's Ring Cycle constantly when I was working on Kraus. Certainly both the music and the process of creating Kraus were powerful ways of giving expression for the longing I felt for Gloria. She was living in Rochester at the time I was making the book, and we were seeing each other about every six to eight weeks in Chicago.
6) Image Recurrence ~ Certain images repeat once or in some cases several times, often in slight variation form, within the book's sequence. There might be slight variations in the repeated image's overall tonal range, or in varying thicknesses of the borders, or perhaps the removal of a border altogether). These changes mean something; they function something like a visual code that must be interpreted by the viewer.
This was my way of experimenting visually with Wagner's idea of leitmotif. I was interested in seeing how the same picture could mean in different ways when placed in varying visual contexts within the book's overall structure.
Later, when I discovered the music of Morton Feldman in 1999-2000 the idea of repeating images became an obsessive aspect of my Creative Process. Two of my Feldman inspired projects, Triadic Memories and The Departing Landscape, were very large, multi-chaptered projects which used image repetition in many ways in response to his music. Later, in 2011-13, I continued the idea of image repetition in my project "An Imaginary Book" and particularly the symmetrical photographs I began making for this large multi-chaptered project.
As my Creative Process progressed over the years I would often re-use select images in various blog projects, or I would use the same image in multiple transformed variations across multiple projects. After I started making symmetrical photographs I would often present the straight "source" photograph and the symmetrical version of that image within the same project, or in different projects. (see my blog link Sacred Art Photography Projects)
7) Light Tonalities ~ The frequent use of light tonalities in my Kraus photographs was probably inspired by two very different photographers: I became fascinated by the photographs of Lee Friedlander in which people's faces were washed out to pure white, as if they were wearing a mask. And later, I saw a box of photographs that Mario Giacomelli had sent to Nathan Lyons at George Eastman House. His use of light and dark tonalities excited me even more than Friedlander's work. The light tones have persisted in my photography in many ways. (See the following links to my projects: Faint Photographs; Dream Portraits; Negative Print Series ~ Memories of Childhood; Snow Photographs.)
8) The Hand Bound Book ~ My use of the hand-bound book as the presentation form for my Senior Visual Thesis requirement at the Institute of Design was largely influenced by Nathan Lyons. I had taken two years of his Home Workshop in Rochester, NY. while at the same time pursuing my undergraduate degree at RIT. Nathan spoke regularly about the power of the book form as a means of making a strong and visually articulate statement on a theme photographically. Robert Frank's book The Americans was held up as a masterpiece of photographic book making in Nathan's Workshops.
Nathan gave us several book assignments, placing emphasis on image sequencing and image juxtapositions. We were expected to make an overall coherent visual statement with the photographs selected for each book. The idea was that the whole of the book should be greater than the sum of its individual images.
I found that the accordion-fold spine approach to hand binding books was the easiest and most practical approach for presenting my photographs. I standardized the page size and print size and placement of the dry-mounted image on each of the separate pages (heavy bristol paper), then I taped the double page spreads together (on the back), then after deciding on the sequence of double page spreads, I taped each of the double page spreads together (again on the back of the bristol paper). I used a heavier matte board for the front and back covers.
The accordion-fold method of binding made it quite easy to edit or re-arrange the sequence of the mounted photographs. I just removed the tape off the back of the page I wanted to move and then re-taped the page in its new location in the sequence.
You can see one of the books I made for Nathan's Home Workshop at this link: Untitled Book, 1965-66.)
When I created the Photography sub-major for the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, (1975 - 2007) I required my Photo II students to make a hand bound book of photographs for their final project of the semester. Some students would chose to make books for their senior final projects as well.
Addendum
Photographs 1968-69 (from my project Homage to Giacometti Part 7)
Below are some photographs I took in 1968-69 in Chicago and New York City. Most of the images were included in a book of photographs I made for my senior thesis project at the Institute of Design in Chicago entitled Kraus. In general, the images are about anxiety and stress, about feeling alone, confused, fearful and ungrounded, about how the young were being indoctrinated to war, and about wanting to distance myself from the military. After graduating from ID in Chicago in 1968 I went to New York City hoping to continue and deepen my relationship to Gloria. The image below entitled Entangled in String was made in New York City in 1969, just before Gloria and I got married and we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I studied for my MFA degree which would allow me to teach photography at the college level, and Gloria finished up her undergrad work in ceramics.
Just before leaving New Mexico in 1972 Gloria gave birth to our son Shaun, an event which appears to have been a miracle. (To learn more about the miracle see my project New Mexico Photographs 1971-72)
Young Soldier 1968
Young Soldiers 1968 Chicago
Soldiers and Bystander 1968 Chicago
Walking Men 1968 Chicago
Entangled in String 1969 New York City
My Shadow on a Walking Man 1969 New York City
Ungrounded 1968 Chicago
On a cold winter night in 1969 before my third military physical exam, Gloria and I went to hear the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven's last Symphony, the ninth "Choral Symphony," with free tickets someone had given us. I was so anxious that that my right thumb twitched nervously, completely out of control, throughout the entire concert.
Fortunately, the letter written by the Chicago doctor on my behalf worked well for me in New York City. I finally received the medical 4F classification. At last I felt free to move on with my life.
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I had applied for a MFA graduate fellowship in Photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and in the spring of 1969 I received notice that I was awarded the fellowship. I would be expected to teach Intro to Photo courses each semester to earn my tuition and a living stipend.
I wanted to ask Gloria to come to New Mexico with me, but was uncertain about doing that. She was in school in Brooklyn and I was afraid that she would not be willing to leave her studies to be with me in New Mexico. I then had a dream in which a blind 'wise old man' who worked in a circus told me I would be a fool if I didn't ask Gloria to marry me.
So I asked Gloria to come to New Mexico with me. She agreed, but, because of her family situation, we decided it would be best if we got married so we could live together with her parents' blessings. I proposed to Gloria and she accepted . . .
This project is a revised version of an earlier project page about
my music inspired projects. The re-published version
was posted on my blog's Welcome Page as
Kraus, 1968 on December 7, 2019.
Related Links:
The Complete Collection of Music Inspired Photography Projects
Snapshots : Stories of My Life In Photography and Teaching
A Personal History of Photography An illustrated, annotated chronology of all my photography projects
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.
