ku # 512 ~ faking it

Scraggy pine at dusk • click to embiggenFYI, the "test" ends later today. So far, there are no exact answers.

However, there have been a few interesting remarks:

Markus Janousch asked; "Interesting. What is more "faked/staged": bringing the bucket into the kitchen, setting up a kitchen around a bucket in the garden or merging two pictures taken at different locations and times into one?"

Ron Tom stated; "The Joy is fake because anybody who chooses to impose creative limitations on an artistic medium doesn't really know how to experience Joy."

These remarks are definitely related. Ron's statement is pretty much on the mark - anyone is free to do whatever they want with a given medium - obviously, that includes "faking it" with photography. That freedom, of course, does not preclude anyone else from liking or disliking - and so stating - what an artist has created with his/her artistic freedom.

Markus' question, regarding different forms of artistic freedom - photography-wise, raises interesting questions. Ones that are much on the minds of many in the photo world. IMO, bringing an object into the kitchen or creating a kitchen set in the garden (much more ambitious than the aforementioned set up) are both tried and true still life techniques. A still life picture is traditionally thought of as a picture of a "staged" or "manufactured" arrangement of things. No one really questions the truth or realness of the pictured referents. There is nothing new at work here.

Merging two pictures taken at different locations and times into one, when the intent is to create a picture that would be the same as that created by the aforementioned traditional still life methodology, is, IMO, merely a modern still life methodology that differs from the traditional only by means of process. In other words, the resultant pictures looks exactly the same no matter how they were created and they all possess and project the same level of truth and realness.

However, that said, we all know that merging two pictures (or more) taken at different locations and times into one can create a picture which creates a 'new' reality simply because separately pictured elements can be merged in ways that defy or differ from the "real" - in the case of my decay pictures, I could photograph a rusted car and placed it on a plate on my kitchen counter and the result, if skillfully created, could be a new reality along the lines of Jerry Uelsmann.

Hmmmm ....