I see the act of photographing as an event - much as a painter, spend the time and energy to take a chair, an easel, paint and paraphernalia to a specific location with an idea in their minds of what they will paint. For me I might have an idea in my mind of a vast scene, or even just one small detail. But getting to that place, the transporting of the camera, the set up of the camera, the use of all the tiny implements, a shutter cable, a loupe, the framing, is much like a painters vocation. Of course this has been noted since photography's emergence, as history has recorded and written about by many respected authors (for me Batchen has been my study) that the way early photographers worked, was much like painters.
The photographic work is just personified by the final picture, the end result, but the total work is so much more, it is that journey, that effort and burden of the use of such a camera, and I am talking specifically about largeformat cameras here, but could be applied to any camera, if you shoot with this mindset. That final image is just the flavour, just the impression, of that whole process of shooting. for me to photograph a flower for example, the 'work' for that picture, is not the flower, yes you can see a picture of a flower, but if you just see a flower you are missing everything that lead up to that flower being on a wall being looked at, at the moment it is looked at.
The Treachery of Images - René Magritte
This is not a pipe, it is a painting of a pipe; this is a pipe with some painted words explaining what it is not; or it is some oil paint on a canvas that happens to look like a pipe; or it is a dialogue, not a painting at all?
My friend, a painter, a fantastic artist remarked to me that he saw photography as weak because all photography is just about time, he sees it as a problem. I think saying photography is only about time is much same as saying painting is only about paint on a surface. Of course it is true, photography is about about time, its always about time, but dismissing it because it is always about time is short sighted. It is of course so much more than 'merely' about time, but to counterpoint that, the idea that photography is about time is one of the key things that makes it so interesting. In support of my statement that painting is about paint on a surface, it is of course about paint, which is not a weakness, it is a huge strength, the skill and time time spent to put the paint on the surface, when one could record a scene in many other less time consuming mediums, is deliberately what it is about. Its not the only thing in a painting, but its a huge part of the reading of a painting.
I like photography because I can use it as a diary. A diary this is a way in which I can write in without my words getting jumbled in my mind as I try and hopelessly fail to write something down accurately before my thought has gone or changed from something irretrievable to something else equally as irretrievable.The problem with this is as although photography has a photographic memory, it also distorts things through cultural appropriation and context. So I try to take pictures, not necessarily visually bland, as a creative I always subconsciously as well as consciously look for something aesthetically pleasing in each frame. But they are almost blank messages in themselves, just basic one liners, they do not need to be read as singular images each with its own set of codes and meanings. They each have barely one reading, that overall can add up to a flavour, like each ingredient, and each herb in a good bolognese.
Lastly, I love photography because each frame is a performance, as its useful as a diary I often find myself taking self portraits. The beautiful long exposures blue me out, I know what I look like, I don't need a photograph of me, I take enough selfies on my phone. It shows my activities, sometimes directly, sometimes more indirectly. But photography is not just a performance in front of the camera, but behind it. As a camera operator I feel like a roadie on a touring music show, putting up the same light, the same stage, the same effects every time in a new place. Its like that setting up a camera each time in each new location, a little performance in itself näytellä
Cultivation of flowers vs people
I think the reason I take pictures of flowers, especially flowers and plants in plant pots, is because I have always been interested in this idea of 'cultivated wilderness' I even did a photographic project specifically about this (to me) strange quality of gardens and parks called Tame Nature. It wasn't a particularly deep piece of work, but it reached a logical conclusion and I like it, it helped me learn some technical things too. But the flowers are nice small chunks of something that has been cultivated and looked at and altered to reach a particular idea of aesthetic beauty. And those ones I took pictures of must have worked on some level because I found them aesthetically pleasing. I find people beautiful too, but I wonder why I don't photograph people often. I regularly photograph my friends in my social life, to the point that I felt I needed to make a piece of work about that too called I and its nickname was Circle, which was three self portraits made up with hundreds of tiny pictures of my friends. But I don't ever take pictures of people with my current practice. I saw Richard Learoyds positive photographs at V&A, really he is using a somewhat similar technique as me and his photographs of people (as well as his still life's) were absolutely stunning. My first ever photograph with a 10x8 camera with this process was actually two of my friends working, ignoring me while I was fucking about with this absurd Victorian mechanism. But currently I never photograph people, why is this? I think it is simply because I am not particularly good at directing people to photograph. Thinking about their body posture and subtle angle of head and the wait their hair and clothes fall. It doesn't come naturally in practice at all. I am great at taking off the cuff snapshot, sudden moment photographs of something or someone that catches my eye, perhaps this is why shooting event photography has helped pay the bills at various times in the last 4 years. But shooting snapshots of people is not what this project is about, so it seems unnatural to include them.
I still have lots of work to do creating concise images,
but I feel through reflecting and thinking about things I am getting closer to my goal.
Ideas for presentation:
Geoffrey Batchen on 'the birth of photography'
- early photographers - Henry Fox Talbot, Neipce, Daguerre
Rene Magritte - abstract paintings
Cultural appropriation and context
"message without a code"
Long exposures
- Hiroshi Sugimoto, Michael Weseley
Richard Learoyd
- mirroring of images, people, directing, framing, mistakes and luck
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