I guess you might say that I feel that the maker's vision should TRANSCEND
the equipment or technique.
I've recently been playing with pinhole. I have a great technical
background in photography but there's an appeal to stripping away all of the technical
sophistication to see what I can do...to bring myself closer to the image by
removing as many of the objects (lenses, shutters, etc.) that stand between me
and it as possible. Now obviously my knowledge of exposure will come into
play when I'm capturing the image and my darkroom experience will affect how I
deal with the exposed film and print the neg...but again, that's almost like
working in the kitchen and knowing how to use the knife and how to fry or boil -
these things are second nature by now and I hardly give them any real
analytical thought.
Wasn't there a line from Issac Asimov that went something like: "any
technology that has become sufficiently sophisticated is indistinguishable from
magic"? I don't consider myself a magician by any means (locked in the basement
playing dungeons and dragons...) but I've reached a point where I don't really
conciously worry about the technical end and just act as a channel that brings
an image into being. I have seen people obsess over the tech side and feel
that they're often letting the technical details come between them and the
experience of making the image. These are the folks who will rattle off all of
the technical details concerning an image perhaps as a way of expressing their
feeling that they have to demonstrate technical mastery to somehow prove their
worthiness to be thought of as an photographer or an artist.
Hey...for me, it's the ruby slippers...it's been here all along but if anyone
had told me how simple it really was, I wouldn't have believed them.
So that's why the "toy" cameras are so useful for some people...they're
removing as much hardware from the space between them and the image as they can so
that they can be in a more direct contact with the creative process.
best
argon
Received on Mon Jan 3 10:02:45 2005
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