civilized ku # 2239 ~ raison d'être / vive la différence
Monday, June 25, 2012 at 03:33PM ;)
Lake Ontario beach ~ Rochester, NY • click to embiggenOn a recent entry, civilized-ku-2221-2221a, Clifford Gwinn (no link provided) asked/stated:
Isn't "picturing what you see" imposing a snapshot aesthetic on what you see? The purest truthful experience is just seeing the scene with your eyes.
It took me a while to respond to his question / statement because, quite simply, I had to think about it for a bit. Even though Clifford probably did not post his comment as a "trick" question, IMO, it is nevertheless a "tricky" question / statement.
my response: While Clifford's statement, "The purest truthful experience is just seeing the scene with your eyes", is, for the most part, undoubtedly true, the fact remains that making a picture of what your eyes see is the only way I know of to share that seeing with others. And, in the making of a picture, it is virtually impossible to do so without imposing some kind of aesthetic on the picture.
Even a picture made by a robotic device, say, a convenience store security camera, imposes in own unique aesthetic - a kind of bloodless mechanistic aesthetic, but an aesthetic nevertheless.
In the making of my pictures, I impose my own personal aesthetic which, it could be said, does share some similarities with the so-called snapshot aesthetic - a fascination of artists with the 'classic' black & white vernacular snapshot, the characteristics of which were: 1) they were made with a hand held camera on which the viewfinder could not easily 'see' the edges of the frame, unlike modern cheap digital cameras with electronic viewfinder, and so the subject had to be centered; and 2) they were made by ordinary people recording the ceremonies of their lives and the places that they lived and visited.
Indeed, most of my pictures exhibit center-biased "composition" and the edges can be somewhat messy / truncated with elements within scene cur off in mind sentence, if you will. And, it should go without stating for anyone who has followed my work for an extended period that I am very interested in picturing the place that I live and places I have visited, to include the banal artifacts of life which are found in those places. Inasmuch as those characteristics are borrowed from the snapshot aesthetic, many believe (and I would not contest that belief/opinion) that I impose such an aesthetic upon my pictures.
However, the truth of the matter is somewhat different .... in my desire not "to reform life but to know it", the aesthetic I "impose", which is part and parcel of my personal vision, is that of commonplace seeing. I center my primary referent(s) simply because that's exactly how the human eye works - if we fix our gaze upon an object or scene, it is most likely centered in our field of vision. And, while it's true that our vision has a peripheral component, I mimic that aspect of human vision by vignetting the corners of my pictures.
One of the primary purposes of my picturing MO (but by no means, the only purpose) is to mimic, as much as the medium and its apparatus allow, how people see the world. To replicate the act of, as Clifford states, a "truthful experience of just seeing the scene with your eyes". Or, as Stephen Shore has stated, to "structure the picture in such a way that communicated my experience of standing there, taking in the scene in front of me?"
So, all of that stated, I do, in fact, impose an aesthetic in the making of my pictures. Call it what you will, that aesthetic is part and parcel of what makes my pictures my own. That is how make pictures which reflect my way of seeing the world, aka: my personal vision.
That stated, I make no apologies for doing so. For after all is said and done, isn't that the point of making art? The act of presenting to the viewer of your creations, not only what you see but also how you see it.
And, in the best of cases, isn't that what makes art interesting - seeing how someone else sees things? And, in viewing such art is the opportunity to get outside of your self and, in the process, discover new things and ideas, or, at the very least to discover a new sensibility to bring to your own way of seeing.
That's how I see it.
Reader Comments (1)
Now explain "made" as well as you did "commonplace seeing". I struggle with truth issues in photography....mine and everyone else`s. I think "made" can be as truthful as "Commonplace seeing". After all, it is how one sees it and you have explained your aesthetic well. "Made" photos can exhibit a lot of craft and skill: so much, that sometimes, it can slip too far away from a truthful rendering. At least for me it does.
The crux for me is how do I avoid a banal rendering without creating a "made" picture.