William Oldacre Photography

Tag: antithesis

  • Entropy

    This is weird but I’ve always thought of entropy as the ultimate force in the verse – something to seriously contend with. And my answer to this ultimate of irreducible forces was to counter with creation. Cheesy as this sounds, I think this is the essential reason I make things – at least on a fundamental, analytical level – never mind intuition and emotion. When I analyze myself to death this is what I get down to – I make stuff to challenge entropy.

    This is flawed logic of course – as I said entropy is irreducible which means my act of creation is leveraged upon entropy – my creation is built upon a deep foundation of destruction. This disharmony upsets me of course – but what can I do? This is the ultimate limit – the most basic nature of things. So be it – I suppose.

    But – the antithesis to entropy would be organization – a potent force opposing entropy – perhaps the only opposing force. Intelligence is an organizing force – maybe the ultimate organizing force and thus ultimate opposing force – despite it’s ironic and absolute basis in entropy. I’m only now beginning to appreciate the amazing possibility that intelligence is a spontaneous, self organizing force in our verse – perhaps even the diametrically opposed, deeply entwined and ultimate opposite of entropy. Wouldn’t that be neat?

    Yin and yang – entropy and intelligence.

  • Why This & Not That

    Over the holidays – which seems like years ago, I was watching the Movie Hanna and one of the characters had some dialogue that gave voice to something I’ve tried to say so many times in the past but have never been able to say so eloquently. Its about Why… of course. Moreover, its about why I photograph the city – and about when I first began seriously considering the city as my subject.

    In 1995, about a year after I moved to Toronto  I was profoundly affected by my mother’s death from cancer. At the same time I had become aimless in my photography having decided to pursue colour photography, embrace digital image processing – with it’s steep learning curve and colour control issues and leave Black & White photography behind. It wasn’t until I was able to gain control of the digital beast and work out a new direction – a vehicle for my emotion – a topic of discussion, that I began to feel better.

    Metro motion – my first body of work about Toronto, was an outpouring of pent up emotion and creativity – an upwelling from within. With that work, I managed to open the floodgates and found a foothold in my formerly stifling urban home. Ironically, in a complete about face for me, the city – the urban environment – antithesis to the rural environment, has become my subject.

    Honestly, I don’t think I could return to the way I was before moving here.