civilized ku # 2623-24 ~ feeling(s) / meaning(s)

Summac and shed ~ Clintonville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
Railroad yard shed ~ Phonicia, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggenOver the past week or so, I have read 2 essays - Daniel Reuter’s History of the Visit and The Challenge of Photography (the order in which they appeared) - by Jörg M. Colberg as found on his website, Conscientious Photography Magazine. IMO, both are well worth your time to read and contemplate.

In Daniel Reuter’s History of the Visit (a project profile), Colberg wrote:

It is quite the irony that the seemingly most descriptive of all media can so successfully obfuscate a narrative, while, at the same time, making it so obvious ... Reuter’s photographs come across directly onto the nervous system. They transport feeling more than they transport information. They transport an atmosphere, a discontent, a confusion. They do their best to resist descriptive approaches to them. The viewer needs to feel them more than to look at them .... They are just like the feelings we all have, feelings that are so familiar, yet that feel so relevant and fresh every single day.

In The Challenge of Photography (general thoughts on the medium and its apparatus), Colberg introduced the concept of defamiliarization, the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar:

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult (in order) to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged .... A work is created “artistically” so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception. ~ Viktor Shklovsky in his essay “Art as Device".

In other words, defamiliarization serves as a means to force individuals to slow down and recognize artistic language. And, is it not "artistic language" which, in the best of applications, helps a viewer of art discover the feeling(s) / meaning(s) to be had (in our case) in a picture?

I make pictures which tend "to resist descriptive approaches to them". I do so in order to encourage, one might even say "force", an interested and inquisitive viewer to take the time to "get into them". The frequent result is, for those who slow down and take the time, an emerging sense of the feeling(s) / meaning(s) I hope to convey with my work. This is especially so, upon repeated viewing of a given picture.

Case in point: I am making a POD book of pictures from our extended stay at Rist Camp*. One purpose for the book is to send a copy to the current owner's mother - the camp has been in the family for almost 100 years - who is now bedridden and under home care. Our hope is to bring her some pleasant and comforting memories of her time - a lifetime - spent at the camp. In addition and at the wife's suggestion / insistence, it is also our intent to send a framed print of my morning peaches picture.

The morning peaches picture is one of 3 Rist Camp pictures hanging on our bedroom wall above the headboard of our bed. At first viewing, the wife sorta liked it but was not enamored thereof. However, after repeated viewing (everyday) of the picture, she gradually came to experience a glimpse of the feeling(s) / meaning(s) to be had for her in the picture - she spent a fair amount of time at the kitchen sink / window and came to the realization it (the picture) spoke directly to her feeling(s) of being there.

The wife also became especially aware of the fact morning peaches could engender similar feeling(s) / meaning(s) for any woman (or, IMO, anyone) who had also spent significant time in that specific place. Therefore, IHO (and I agree), morning peaches, of all the pictures I made at Rist Camp, was the one which we think might most convey pleasant and comforting feeling(s) / meaning(s) to the owner's mother.

Or not.

It's always possible the picture will annoy the living hell out of the owner's mother. She might associate the kitchen / kitchen sink with drudgery and misery. In that event, the picture will still convey feeling(s) / meaning(s) but not the one(s) the wife and I hope she experiences, but ....

.... as Colberg noted in The Challenge of Photography:

.... A photograph thus is not necessarily a document or fact, and it’s certainly not “the truth” (whatever that term might mean). It is a truth, one truth out of many others, a personal truth: The photographer’s. To assume that this truth then automatically translates into a larger truth is foolish. It might, or it might not.

And that, my dear friends, is the wonder and mystery of picture making - despite the fact the medium and its apparatus is the most accurately descriptive of all art mediums, it nevertheless opens a window on the world replete with views of feeling(s) / meaning(s) as diverse and personal as there are those who make pictures and as there are those who observe them.

*for those unfamiliar with Rist Camp, click HERE to see pictures.