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Response to something murky

from Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com)
I think what has been happening here is that we are discovering the diversity of expectations from photography. In particular, Wayne says that this is an "image which fails to represent any known reality."

I have about fifty pieces of non-photographic art (unfortunately, I have to rotate it since it doesn't all fit)in my home. This comes from growing up in an artist-oriented family, knowing artists most of my life, and occasionally buying things that were appealing. None of them "represent any known reality" in the way in which Wayne intends it, and very little (non-photographic) art does this outside the commercial realm.

I would guess that Mike and I share the view that the photographs we take/make/create (I don't want to get into that rat's nest) are closer to the art that hangs on my walls than to National Geographic. They show reality at a very different level, one that is evocative of a variety of emotions, that searches for a deeper meaning than the physical. Because of this, it becomes not a record of something that was but a record of things we feel and think.

This doesn't deny the validity of record shots - as this would be if you could recognize the woman walking down the street after viewing the image - but it puts them in one specific place, which is outside of art. It's the difference between fiction and non-fiction. Maybe it's a closer analogy to the historical novel, or the autobiographical novel. Ballard's Emperor of the Sun (not the Spielberg movie which missed the point,) for example.

I commented on Mike's image in another forum, but let me say that it is not underexposed, there is a wide range of tones placed in a way to suite the image, and it succeeds at doing something that a "straight" shot wouldn't. It captures a mood, or a series of moods, and it does it well enough to make me imagine being somewhere else (now I'm not going to tell you where :-))

(posted 8612 days ago)

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