.love for sale.

. .. . an informal essay on photography (from summer 2004). . . Overwhelmed with the thought of what photography means to me. At this time I honestly don’t think I have a full understanding of what photography is. Over several years I am sure I will come to a stand and be firm in my decision. For now all I can say is that for the time being I feel a combination of theories to be true and comprehendible. At the end of spring semester I was told that making, genuine, sincere and honest images was important. That these practices were what one of my instructors was trying to instill in all of us as photography students. At least that is what I took from the conversation. All summer I pondered on how that was the best thing I have ever heard and how I wanted to strive as a photographer to stay away from clichés. I wanted someone to look at my work and see how well I compose and see how well I see the world and how well I could make a crafted image. I thought about all the things that bothered me and all the things that had been done. This fall semester my eyes were opened to a world where this could be possible. How I could control how my work was viewed and how my work meant. I understand that people are removed. In the article The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction it talks about a lot of things one very interesting point is the aura of a work and how it is lost through reproduction. But, one of the main things I took from the article was that we as individuals are removed. Everything we do is without thought. We turn the faucet and there is water. We never stop to think about the process about how that water got to our house. Flip the switch and there is electricity. We are detached we don’t contemplate at one time we were a contemplative society, however we have lost that. We believe we are individuals and that we make choices. Do we really? “The individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response they are about to produce, and this in nowhere more pronounced in film.” I think that through photography and mass media we are told that we made a choice and that we are different but really we are letting them show us what we want and they let us think it is our decision. We are removed. We have created distance a distance that creates desire we want it because it is far away. It is something that is right there but we can’t have it we don’t really know what it is even though it is showing us everything. I think that photography provokes both feeling and thought. I think that photography is a mix between what is real and what is not real. “Photographs are not simply different from other kinds of pictorial representation in certain detailed respects; on the contrary, photographs are not really representations at all. They are the practical realization of the general artistic ideal of objectivity and detachment.” To me a photograph is an image a representation of something that is real but that photograph is not real. A photograph is an appropriated image. A photograph is a reflection of light off of an object. Captured by chemicals. A flower in a photograph is changed by those chemicals, and by lighting, and by exposure time and by focal length and thousands of other things. We don’t see that way. We will never see that flower that is in the picture on the wall. This has been the hardest thing for me to understand and except but it is true. Pictures of me are not me it is a representation of myself it is that crafted image. Photography is technical. Photography is seeing beyond the obvious and seeing how things are. I will take pictures to see what they (things) look like as pictures. I believe that photography has a great deal to do with presence of absence and absence of presence. Images are like a ghost it is there but it is not. Absence is so significant that it give presences to the work. A photograph should disrupt the viewer it should cause them to break frame. It does not need to change the world or challenge it, but it should stir thought. It should make someone think out side of their world, as they know it. At least to me a successful image would. A photograph does not prove anything. Photography is not evidence. However I find that most and even myself feel as though it has not been seen or done until I have recorded it through my lens. Letting go of photography as means of scrapbook or visual journal is the hardest. To cease rambling and come up with what I have as a solid hold, for now, on my idea of photography. I would say that photographs are not real as in real world, but a small reference to the presence of something that is real. Photography is representation. Yes the Grand Canyon is there but you will never see it how you imagined it via pictures and other images. Photography can be judged formally just as a painting by using words like, shape, space and line. Photography is hard not anyone can pick up a camera and contribute to photography as art. Photographs have the power to detach make you want without thinking. A photograph can cause you to linger. A camera can invade your space and be intrusive. If you are always taking pictures you are not living life. Every photograph is a message sometimes you must know the intent of the maker to get the full meaning. I believe that photographs should not be used to only capture the beautiful but to explore the grotesque. I want people to look at my work and not see me but see my subject. I believe that if we found and understood the single entity of photography we would not be so enthralled and we would find it to be pretty dull.