(someone else's) kitchen life # 88-89 / what is a photograph? # 19 ~ forgetting that you are a picture maker

stuff on a kitchen table ~ Merchantville, NJ • click to embiggen
locked door with KEEP OUT sign ~ not place specific other than in my Head • click to embiggen

Many books have been written - and continue to be written - about How To Read A Photograph. Virtually all of those books have been authored by a picture maker or someone in the business of teaching picture making. A fact which lurks at the heart of the difficulty many have with 'reading' a photograph.

Continuing on with yesterdays entry, simple questions / even simpler answers, wherein I mentioned 3 questions as posited by Mike Johnston on TOP, my simple answer to the simple question of how does one look at a photograph? was simply, (for me) with eyes and mind wide open.

How does one keep the eyes and mind wide open when viewing a photograph? Again, a simple answer - forget the fact that one is a picture maker and everything about the tools of the craft.

Really. Banish all thoughts of things related to making pictures. I would even recommend banishing all thoughts about every photograph you have ever viewed as well as the history and traditions of the medium itself. In other words, you'd better free your mind instead ...

iMo, the only driving impulse one should adopt when viewing photographs (or any other form of art) is that of curiosity, aka: the desire to see and learn (why does the picture maker want me to see this picture?). Expect to be surprised and challenged by what a picture maker has put in front of you because a good picture should not only delight the eye but also engage the mind. Expectations about what you have been told is a good picture and thoughts, craft and academic wise, will only get in the way of if not completely block what could be a potentially new and unique picture viewing experience.

Interestingly enough, what I have described here is how most non-picture makers relate to photographs. First and foremost, they look at a picture to see what it depicts (the referent). In most cases, if they are not interested in the referent, then they are not interested in the picture no matter what its 'artistic' merits might be. If the referent captures their attention then it is possible that they might engage the picture to discover why, beyond the visually obvious, they like the picture. In fact, the picture might even engage their mental faculties in an effect to 'read' the meaning that might be found in the picture.

I would go so far as to postulate that a small subset (relatively) of the non-picture making picture viewers who go to photo galleries to look at photographs expect to have their mental faculties engaged when viewing photographs. They are seeking the complete package, picture viewing wise. That is to write that they are looking for not only illustration but also some form of illumination to spice things up.

iMo, the best pictures are all about life and seeing the world around us in new or unexpected ways. In other words, I am not interested in the mechanistic how of what a picture maker sees but rather what a picture maker has chosen for me to see and hopefully gain a bit of insight to my relationship to life and the world around me.

Or, as the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World might say (if he were looking at pictures rather than drinking beer), "Stay curious, my friends" because as a poster somewhere on the interweb states ... The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out.