diptych # 60 / civilized ku # 2649 ~ bumping up against the surface barrier
Monday, January 6, 2014 at 11:10AM 
60 Main ~ Phonicia, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggen
60 Main interior ~ Phonicia, NY - in the Catskill Park • click to embiggenAs I have mentioned in a previous entry or 2, I am suffering from web-based picture viewing overload. That condition is growing ever more intense as time goes by. And even if one operates, online picture viewing wise, under the assumption that it's all good (the pictures), I am a firm believer in the notion that there can be too much of a good thing.
So, in the cause of reducing my web-based viewing fatigue, I have limited my online picture viewing to a relatively few blogs which feature the pictures of the blog author and 2 magazine type sites which publish the works of many different picture makers, most of whom are making pictures which prick my eye and sensibilities. You might think that M.O. makes me a creature of habit but I'd rather be that than a bleary-eyed creature aimlessly wandering about the near-limitless online picture viewing morass*.
That written, even limiting my web-based picture viewing to the aformentioned extent, I still am left somewhat bleary-eyed and most intensely unsatisfied. I attribute the bleary-eyed-ness primarily to screen fatigue as opposed to picture viewing fatigue. My life, like those of many others, is filled with screens - iPhone, iPad, MacBook (Air), Mac Pro+monitor, flat screen tv (2), auto dashboard info / navi screen, to name just a few.
To a certain extent, I can state with conviction that I've had my fill of screens.
Screen fatigue does contributed to my unsatisfied state inasmuch as every picture looks the same on a screen - the "surface" of every picture is always identical. However, even more influential, unsatisfied wise, than that viewing aspect is the fact that an onscreen picture has not even the illusion of tangibility. It remains, to my eye and sensibility, forever removed / detached from any sense of immediacy. Inevitably and nearly universally, the picture strikes me as rather lifeless and coolly analytical.
Consequently, even when viewing online pictures which I like, I am always left with the feeling of wanting more. Not more pictures but more immediacy, a physical / tactile engagement with the pictures in the form of prints - i.e., the ability to touch them, to hold them, and to see the surface of the substrate.
Without a doubt, the surface of a print - matte, semi-matte, glossy, smooth, textured, not to mention the size of a print, adds immeasurably (for good or bad) to the viewing experience and ultimately to the appreciation of a picture.
Therefore, to my eye and sensibilities, the best of all picture viewing worlds is that in which pictures have interesting / rich denoted and connoted content which is presented on the surface of a finely crafted print, which, in tandem, create a truly beautiful object.
Stay tuned for more of what I plan to do about getting some satisfaction.
*after writing this entry, I read today's TOP entry which addresses the same subject.
Reader Comments (1)
I agree wholeheartedly: prints are better. That said, I have to state that my passive and active interest in photography has profited immeasurably by the possibility to see images on screen, a true bounty of them. Of course now there is the problem of overload, but still, in comparison to pre-internet times, there's a net gain: Living not in a metropolitan area with access to all kinds of museums, libraries, galleries, my possibilities to see and learn would have been earnestly restricted.