man & nature # 16 ~ empty yet aware
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 11:21AM 
After the rain • click to embiggenMost who know my thoughts and notions regarding the photo activity know as critiquing know that I think, as do many others, that the single most inane and somewhat insulting comment one can make regarding a picture is the nevertheless ubiquitous "I would have ...." remark. Simply put, as an artist, I could give a damn what anyone would have done given the same referent.
Think about it. It's my picture, one that reflects my vision which is derived from how I see the world and how I feel about what I see. It is my expression of my notions of how my pictures should look and feel. My vision springs from who I am. Why the hell would I care, even in the slightest, how you would have done it?
The only thing I care about relative to others and my pictures is what others feel and think about what I am saying with my pictures - do my pictures communicate with others? As Garry Winogrand stated:
For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film ... if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.
And, inversely, when I view photographs made by others, I just look at them for what they are, not what they might be. Someone else has seen something and, by picturing it, brings it to my attention. It's entirely up to me to relate to that fact - the fact that is a specific photograph.
When dealing with the fact that is a photograph, I am much more interested in what it (and the photographer) might have to say than how it was made. It never occurs to me to think what I might have done with the same referent. For the most part that is simply because it's not in my nature to do so when viewing art but, on another level, I know that to do so would only interfere with or set up barriers to listening to what a photograph / photographer is trying to say.
Which is to say that I view pictures in the same manner with which I make pictures - with an "empty", yet aware, eye and mind, aka, a state of ku.
IMO, the best thing to keep in mind when viewing pictures are the words of John Loengard:
There are two kinds of photographs: mine and other people's. I never think of what I might do myself when I look at someone else's pictures...
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: the Cinemascapist, aka, Aaron Hobson wrote:
a little ditty from Jonathan Swift (1693)
Haply you judge these lines severely writ
Against the proud usurpers of the pit;
Stay while I tell my story, short, and true;
To draw conclusions shall be left to you;
my response: exactly so.
Reader Comments (3)
If i may. I appreciated a lot the light conditions you choose.
Maybe it is casual, or maybe not since you are certainly an old fox in photographic terms not missing a natural reflector.
I agree with you that telling how you made a picture is at least a useless thing. However there is a component in the photographers performance that is intriguing me.
I speak of performance due to the relation that a photographer has with his/hers subjects, the way he/she acts in the environment, even to gain the ku state you speak of.
The idea here is that the photographer is sometimes (i won't say always) involved in a "land art" or "body art" performance. Knowing more about that could be interesting and somewhat fascinating.
I would have italicized the third "my" in the third paragraph.
a little ditty from Jonathan Swift (1693)
Haply you judge these lines severely writ
Against the proud usurpers of the pit;
Stay while I tell my story, short, and true;
To draw conclusions shall be left to you;