man & nature # 189 ~ too "smart" for our own damn good?

Morning joy • click to embiggenJörg Colberg's website / blog, Conscientious, is one of the very few sites that I check out every day.

I do so because he regularly addresses ideas and notions about the medium of photography and its many possibilities, characteristics, and qualities. Also thrown in on a regular basis are links to and entries about most often interesting pictures - actually, bodies of work. Throw in the odd entry about a few current cause célèbres and what you have is one of the most thoughtful sites about photography and its practitioners on the web.

In a recent entry, When do photographs become photo illustrations?, Colberg address's the ever-popular notion of:

It has become fairly obvious that lately that our understanding of what photography is and does has not quite caught up with, well, what it is and does. A wonderful case in point is the attempt to differentiate between "photographs" and "photo illustrations". What is the difference? When does a photograph become a "photo illustration"?

One of the things that I like most about his entry can be found in this paragraph:

Let's first get the obvious out of the way. Of course, any photograph is based on a set of choices made by a photographer (whether or not the photographer is aware of that or whether he or she had the choice is irrelevant). What type or camera do you use (film versus digital, and if film what kind of film, black and white or colour)? What lens do use (telephoto, macro, etc.)? How do you frame the shots? These are all choices already made, which one could interpret as pointing towards that any photo really is not a depiction of reality (whatever that might actually be). Thing is, though, first of all this argument is kind of trivial. Of course, you could now pick your favourite contemporary French philosopher and spend hours pouring over arcane theoretical texts - I don't think there's much (if anything) to be gained from that, though. (my emphasis)

Like Colberg I also believe that there isn't much to gain from "spend[ing] hours pouring over arcane theoretical texts" about "reality". That is unless you are in academia (student / teacher) and philosophical / theoretical constructs about the nature of reality is your field.

If one is engaged in making pictures with a camera of the actual world, one is not engaged in making pictures of theories, philosophies, or abstract ideas. One is engaged in making pictures of actual people, places, and things that we can see, touch and feel - things that are commonly accepted as real/reality.

In the best of photographic representation / documentation of actual people, places, and things the viewer is most often incited to think / ruminate about the nature / meaning of those actual people, places, and things pictured. In fact, in a picture in a medium that is unsurpassed as a cohort with the real, it is the fact that we come face-to-face with actual people, places, and things that we accept as real but in many cases don't fully "understand" that makes us think about the nature / meaning of things.

If we begin the practice of looking at pictures with the notion that "reality" / the "real" are meaningless words, what the hell is the point of even contemplating the idea of reality or the real at all? The idea of commonly accepted ideas about reality / the real, AKA - truths, is a totally bogus concept and even thinking about it a total waste of time.

In fact, If we begin the practice of looking at pictures with the notion that "reality" / the "real" are meaningless words, what the hell is the point of making pictures? Maybe the point of making and viewing pictures might simply be to create a pleasant, mind-numbing diversion from the fact that nothing is real.

But, that's not a place that I can go. All I know is that the realities of today's diptych are very real for me - amongst many things, the joy and innocence of childhood, the pleasure of morning coffee in the wilderness and the joy and happiness of knowing that it was prepared by loving wife, and the warmth and beauty of morning light filtering through the trees.

However, let me be perfectly clear - I did not picture joy, innocence, pleasure, happiness, warmth or beauty. I pictured the real face of real child, a real pot of real coffee grounds amongst the real clutter of an real outdoor breakfast, and the real light of a real morning as it fell upon a real tent and a real forest floor.

These real people, places, and things can and do suggest many meanings and understandings about the ideas /concepts / theories regarding joy, innocence, pleasure, happiness, warmth and beauty as they manifest themselves in my reality as well as, I am certain, to the reality of many others - ideas /concepts / theories regarding joy, innocence, pleasure, happiness, warmth and beauty that are held as commonly accepted realities and (gasp) truths.

If you want to opine against such realities and truths based upon "your favourite contemporary French philosopher... arcane theoretical texts" have all the fun you want with that reality. Square / tap/ ballroom dance away on the head of a pin if you like. I just think "that argument is kind of trivial" - no, make that very trivial when standing face-to-face with the realities of the real world.

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[Svein-Frode]

There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false. - Harold Pinter (1958)