Alan -
I understand what you are saying, but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions.
I see much of my work as being about culture. When I think about how I absorb information about culture, it's often through the stories (myths, even), the art, the handiwork. When I photograph these things, I do what they do, insert the editorial view, the reduction from the million things that can be seen to the few elements that matter to me.
I'm reading a book right now, Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo. I've read it a number of times, it's known as the greatest novel written by a Mexican, maybe the greatest written in Latin America. It's a story that tells so much about Mexican culture, yet it is not only fictitious, it freely mixes "real" events and a ghost world. It tells more about Mexican culture than any photos I've seen, and when I go to Mexico, which I try to do as often as possible, I've observed the culture that exists in the book and I try to bring it out in my photos. They are fictions, even though (until now) shot more or less "straight," but there is no reality in them. And in the photos I've set up, there's even less reality of event but possibly more reality of culture. I think this is what Pedro Meyer, an early experimenter with digital collage, has tried to do with his work, bringing "truth" out by "fictional" images.
The photos that are the most accurate depictions of "reality" are snapshots, and that is why they are so valuable many years later. Because there is so little thought and skill put into them, they do truly represent the most accurate view of "reality," but I don't think most people here are aspiring to snapshots.
There's a book called Disappearing Witness that discusses the changes in photography from being a documentary "witness" to what it is today, it's a bit academic and I think it ignores the history of manufactured photos to some extent. But it does point out that photography will not be the same in the future as it was in the past, and that this is only accelerated, not created, by digital photography.
Jeff,
Photography was immediately appropriated by all media as new technology always is. Photography is no different. Accelerated change is the norm which is why many tenaciously hold on to the familier. All digital graphic art is a form of electronic drawing. Besides obvious "straight" exceptions, I believe photographs become a type of collage once they leave their analog state.
The similarity of the photographic mystique with magical realism works for me to some extent. I think there may be a hard-wired psychological as well as cultural basis for photography that strengthens its power of illusion.
For me pictures are objects as well as images. The two things that I think about when looking at any art is material qualities and provenance. I'm used to the idea of art being partly about what it is made of. It is frustrating to me when that can't be determined. Sometimes it could be years before I get to see the real art and not a copy or to at least learn how it was made. I'm eagrely waiting to see the work of the collaborative artists R.&S. Parke-Harrison first hand. I have the book "The Architects Brother" and am fascinated by it. They have made photogravures of large photographic collages. Opening in Chicago next Friday: http://www.edelmangallery.com/
AZ
At 01:34 PM 2/10/2004, Alan Zinn wrote:We understand all pictures through the lens of our time and culture. Pictures all have some latent content that changes with time. They must be thought of as re-mixes. I wonder how much different in this respect (if at all) the material record in film is from the invented picture? Or is it just the artifactness of film that intrigues us and gives it more veracity (deserved or not)?. In academic lingo they would say film is "privileged". Like a hand-print in clay, film is a direct material connection with its subject. Nothing (no human subjectivity) intervenes. I'm saying that the viewer must be reminded of this as it may fade from the collective consciousness.
The digitality ( should that be its name instead of photograph?) contains infinite possibilities for revision and therefore has to be assumed to be entirely fictive. By that measure it falls into the same class as painting or drawing, etc.
Jeff Spirer Photos: http://www.spirer.com One People: http://www.onepeople.com/ Surfaces and Marks: http://www.withoutgrass.com
