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8.15.2015 |
Programming the Eye: How Cultures Read Photographs Differently
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I've been reading the Indian photography magazine Better Photography voraciously in the past few weeks. The writing greatly outpaces any local photo magazines (i.e., mags from the United States). Better Photography adds real criticism to the discussion and I recommend it to any photographer interested in gaining thicker skin.
Better Photography contains a section where professional photographers analyze reader photos. They rarely love any, but give reasons and try to be honest about their reactions. I was struck in one by a word I keep seeing in the publication: loneliness. The commentary (in pink, below) says the photo depicts "a sense of the long, lonely road." This is just one example, but I've seen it throughout the publication. This time it finally bubbled up on my mental radar.
The Indians look for or find the quality of "loneliness" very often in photographs. Each time, I've nodded my head and subconsciously said, "Well I suppose that could be; sure, loneliness." But loneliness is never something I would have immediately identified as a value transmitted through the photo. From an American perspective, I could just as easily see those photos as conveying quiet or stillness. 
[Example pulled from page 97 of Better Photography, May 2013.]
I suspect that the overpopulated nature of India makes these remote, isolated scenes alien and strange to viewers there. In America they are not so rare, and since we see empty scapes so often - and feel a variety of emotions within them - casting a solitary photo with certainty into the category of "loneliness" assumes too much. Here, it could be a morning walk, a hike or jog, a camping trip. There are two people at the scene, after all (photographer and subject). It's not loneliness at all. The person has company. Alternatively, photos that are much more common to the Indian - populated with such a density of figures that I can't help but feel awe - seem alien and strange to me. The crowded scenes of India, filled with people performing intimate behaviors in public, simply don't happen here - or at the very least would require creeping stealth and borderline stalking behaviors. There they are common. Here they are rare.
I love how, by looking at how other cultures read photographs, you can sometimes get a sense for the way eyes get programmed differently. An empty photograph conveys a much different feeling to someone used to empty space.
Labels: Essays, Writing
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5.01.2014 |
Childs' Apocalyptic Planet and Its Effects
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I've been reading Apocalyptic Planet by Craig Childs. The book is hitting me on two levels. On one, the information is incredible. It seems to be the first information I've seen that feels outside the tenacious battle of the global warming debate. It does this all the while giving deeper explanations of the various fates - past and future - of the planet. Childs also resonates with a much different perspective of time, one that allows an impression of a much longer, older, more dynamic and varied earth to settle in. The facts are extraordinary gifts.
For example, in one chapter where he experiences life atop five thousand feet of ice in Greenland, he talks about the gusts of winds that condense moisture into snowflakes and then bashes them apart - again and again - every hundred and fifty feet or so. This process purifies the water to the point that it is poisonous to drink - the water leeches salts and minerals out of cells. This property of water is a familiar wow in a science classroom, but I had no idea it could come as a result of natural processes.
Just now, thinking over this process - water purifying itself - it flies in the face of the concept of entropy, something I've always had a hard time getting to gel. I just don't buy it. Order seems to be an evaluative opinion, almost an aesthetic preference. Disorder is matter that we want to clean up and sort. But what makes one qualitatively different from the other?
There's the common example of the bedroom that I've never liked. Here, entropy is the process by which your room becomes a mess; you cleaning it up is the energy input that restores that order. Another example is mixing salt and pepper. It's easy to mix up but difficult to separate. Well, isn't that what happens on the top of the frozen block of ice that Child's writes from? The purification of snow by natural processes shouldn't happen, according to these models. But it seems that natural processes both salinate and desalinate. The energy input is the same. I'm sure there are some ways to nitpick it apart and change the conversation, but it's a noteworthy fact, a crucial understanding of what's possible on the planet.
The second level that the book has touched me on is Craig Childs as an author. I try to uncover his process, and he leaves many clues. He seems to have a notebook with him all the time and writes furiously in it on a daily basis. My sister met him on a project and said he was always scribbling in his notebook. He has probably written her into a story somewhere to be published someday or not.
This passion, this engagement with writing is something I envy. I am always wishing I could write more often and more intensely, but I rarely get around to it. I even try notebooks - to carry them around with me, but for some reason it only lasts a week at best. His words are a reminder to not give up. I need to keep writing and throwing things into the world. Writing solidifies thought. It makes it more real. It allows you to ponder yourself. Writing illuminates thinking errors.
Not everyone may be like this, but thinking is so easy, so quick, that it leads to a certain kind of arrogance. Only when I start writing things down do I realize that I don't understand them nearly as well as I thought I did. I come to see that my fleeting inspirations are fragmentary. They are not long enough. They don't connect. They are small. They make so much sense in the moment but they are too playful and thin - confetti in my mind.
Only by writing can you really evaluate the merits of your own mind. Without that arrogance assuming you have it all solid and together, better habits of mind can be developed. Practicing writing is practice in thinking.
Labels: Essays, Writing
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7.05.2012 |
Stadium of Fire from Above
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Halfway up Cascade mountain and the fireworks beneath me register no change at all on my camera's exposure reading. [The photo above shows two or three large fireworks going off as a forest fire (started by fireworks) sends a cloud of smoke into the air.] The city is simply too bright. Its battalion of continuous, 24-7, 360° light sources make the yearly hooha rather ridiculous. Shopping malls clearly outshine the Stadium of Fire. Streams of cars going rapidly from some visual event to another are roughly equal and just as visually impressive as the teeny balls of glittery light.
Fireworks are supposed to stand in for the grandeur and glory of war - the canon boom, missile flare, and exploding shrapnel - but I can clearly hear semis revving over the din. Aren't we past this, as a culture and a nation? What are we trying to prove? Are we simply trying to scare the birds? They have seemed distressed up here. The crickets take no note as far as I can tell.
Maybe it's for the "magic," the twin enchantment and cultural education of our children. I remember loving them early but got bored after just a few years. It was one repetitious affair after another. I was sleepy. It hurt my neck to see every last ember and sparkling source of ooooh. The displays were not anything amazing after two or three times. Kids can be entertained and enchanted, but only temporarily. A rock and a stick, an interactive device, is endlessly fascinating. Fireworks displays turn the sky into a television screen. So it's for the adults, a certain subset of adults for whom this holy day somehow galvanizes. They see it as a necessary indoctrination of patriotism.
I farted on the way down, then realized that I couldn't smell it. All the air smells like flatulence. I look up and notice another mushroom cloud of smoke coming up from Alpine. The fire must still be burning. I hear gangster rap techno blaring and scan with binocs for the offenders below me on the trail. Deer eyes meet mine. Caught in the middle. Through the oscillating darkness, it moves up off the trail and dissipates. It must be terrified and I'm not helping. Labels: Essays, Rants
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11.01.2006 |
German Innovations
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Photojojo, a site which scoures the net to give give photo enthusiasts neat little tips and tricks, posted a solution for an inexpensive photo stand today. Basically, the idea is to go buy a bag of 100 teacup candles for $8, throw away the wax, cut the metal holder in half, fold along the cut, turn it upside down, and you have a sleek little photo stand. The way I presented it, the job sounds a little involved, but it does look simple. Here, a photo is a much better explanation:  But I'm not here to do what the jojo has already. I've got to say that the German site they linked to was filled with neat ideas. The point of the projects seems to be, since I don't know German, to find innovative ways to use household appliances in new ways. They range from the functional to the absurd, and of course the absurd AND functional. I mean, I have on more than one occassion wished for something like this to have existed, but never thought it possible.  But to carry it around on a regular basis would be a joke. And the people who actually do bring those things are the same type of people that already carry pillows around with them. But not all is in jest. The site exhibits an upgrade to the chopstick which is nothing short of marvelous. Couldn't you see this as starting a utensil revolution?  But, there was nothing that would prepare me mentally for their last creation. I might be more responsive to it than most, because I have an irrational fear of sharp needly things. I can't even look at rose bushes without wincing, and actually, while I'm typing this I'm trying to avert my eyes (rolling them back in my head, yes) because I'm thinking of the thing on that site. I'd describe it more but I'd have to learn to type backwards and in the fetal position. You'll just have to click this link because there's no way I'm having it on my homepage. I love it and I fear it. Labels: Essays, Writing
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1.22.2004 |
Moon Project
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My motivational moon movement has finally been unleashed on humanity. You must go read it by clicking here. It will definitely change your life.... for the better. And photographer Don Lavange documented my position: Labels: Essays, Writing
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10.29.2003 |
My Alternative Children
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