Tag: interpretation

  • Interpret

    Interpret

    Convergent series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, brown, red, vibrant, wedge, shape
    Gale Force Wind, 2016 – Convergent :: (click to see more)

    Last night I went to hear an artist friend give a talk. Later, I had a dream where I was speaking with him at his studio. As I wandered around I picked up an unfinished piece and I’m embarrassed to say I damaged it, but fortunately my friend was generous about it.

    Then the dream abruptly changed and we were standing in a large book store with shelves of glossy colourful photography books and swinging his arm wide at the racks and racks of books he said – “I have no idea where this is all going.”

    This is of course my own insecurity speaking – not his. But in thinking about this statement I realized a few things. We now have access to extremely powerful cameras and software that can make ever more vivid and hyper-real imagery and if everyone is able to make these images what distinguishes them – where is the artistry.

    Despite the ease of photo production or perhaps in spite of it – the key to artistry is interpretation. Likely this is true in all artistic mediums but perhaps less obvious with photography because of it’s mechanical, graphic nature. I was reminded of interpretation last night when I saw an image by Ralph Eugene Meatyard called Fog, from 1955 – to me, this is a superb example.

    Interpretation has been a hard concept for me to acknowledge. I spent my photographic formative years studying technique from Ansel Adam’s books and his landscape/documentary aesthetic. I came to feel that was the right way to make artistic images and in doing so denied or perhaps sublimated my own intuition about creativity.

    It’s clear to me now, the way forward and the answer to my friend’s dream statement – is interpretation. The tools and the ease of production aren’t relevant, it’s what you do with them.

  • What Is Truth

    What Is Truth

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, green, orange, yellow, muted, waves, patterns
    Orange Green And Yellow Waves, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    I just read and have read so many statements and critiques about truth and photography. It seems that somehow we have become stuck on this notion that photographs tell the truth and that now with the advent of digital manipulation this hard fact has been subverted. I think we’re missing the point. Its true photographs have the ability to record real things, places, scenes, activity etc – … within the confines of the technical ability of the equipment employed at the time, but – whether or not the recorded things are in fact real depends on so many factors – many of the same factors that a recording made with paint, or graphite or marble etc also encompass. That is to say, these and other mediums can also record truth, albeit not so readily.

    I think the real issue here is that somehow as a society we became lulled into associating photography with recorded truth. That was our collective mistake and now it has become difficult and often an angering one to disassociate.

    Aside from photography’s historic aspect as a medium for recording truth, digitized photography has opened an incredible wealth of possibilities to explore – the most obvious of which is to play off our collective mis-conception that photographs don’t lie. Much of the possibilities to explore I’m sure are as yet to be dreamt of, let alone discovered and applied.

    But all this begs the true question at the crux of the matter – What Is Truth?

    All us humans, are essentially minds locked inside bodies with various sensory apparatus. Are we to rely upon our senses for an assessment of the truth? Are we to trust our interpretations of our senses for the truth? Can we even be certain that we are not just dreaming? I know all of this is academic and has long been hashed over philosophically and that essential bootstrap arguments have been derived that allow us to determine that yes, we are in fact awake and not dreaming our own “reality”.

    Still – truth is an interpretation that we are socialized with – that we learn as we grow – learned, just like we learned that photographs show truth.

    Photographs depict truth = not always, not anymore.