ku # 575 ~ Spring has sprung # 3

Another stump in a marsh • click to embiggenJohn Szarkowski, in his book, The Photographer's Eye, lists the detail as one of the medium's inherent characteristics about which he stated:

.... The photographer was tied to the fact of things ... he could only record it as he found it ... he could only isolated the fragment, document it, and by doing so claim for it some special significance, a meaning which went beyond simple description ... [T]he compelling clarity with which a photograph recorded the trivial suggested that the subject had never before been properly seen, that it was in fact perhaps not trivial, but filled with undiscovered meaning. - italic emphasis by me

The more I understand my attraction to picturing - both the making and viewing thereof, the more I realize that I am immensely attracted to the detail and, without a doubt, the medium of photography excels at recording with compelling clarity those details which at first glance appear to be quite trivial. As far as I am concerned, the more packed with compelling-clarity detail a picture is, the more I am attracted to it - I get no kick from visual simplicity (or very little).

But here's the thing about the detail in my pictures - at best, I pay little attention to the detail found in my pictures at the point-in-time of picturing them. My only awareness of them is as clumps / fields of details as opposed to specific / discrete / individual elements. At the point-in-time of picturing it is those clumps / fields, viewed as a whole, that I attempt to organize across the 2-dimensional surface (and within the frame) of the yet-to-be print in a pleasing manner.

This approach to picturing, that is to essentially ignore the detail specifics when picturing, is the reason why my eye, my mind, and oft times my soul are endlessly fascinated by my own pictures - even though I made them, they are filled with compelling-clarity details that I did not see at the point-in-time of picturing them but that I can discover and explore after the fact of picturing.

I find it quite amazing that I can so regularly amaze myself.

FYI, this entry is the fulfillment, at least in part, of my stated intent to discuss the following from Minor White:

When I look at pictures I have made, I have forgotten what I saw in front of the camera and respond only to what I am seeing in the photographs. ~ Minor White