I keep settling
back to the silt and brine
sun gazing
that distant pin of light
and miles of water suggest
it’s just a matter of time
(until til I break the surface)
if I were inclined
and did you know we can free-fall
beneath the surface
(around thirteen meters)
how is that possible
that we can still fall
even when the air
is
gone
If we are on the topic of wishing, and a wish can be anything, and it doesn’t mean it’s the end of more wishing tomorrow, then I will heap my dreams into this river like some giant wishing well. That’s what they call it? Any body of water which drinks our spare change and the full bodied hopes of children who teach us all the meaning of believing and of course the world is possible, it’s ours isn’t it? All of ours? And conflicted people stare casually at grace and let it slip to the bottom.
The virtue and terminus of analog photography is the tangible print, which occupies physical space. It is defiant to the cold storage and virtual nonexistence of digital imagery, which trivializes the entire process. We can adopt the principles of the analog camera to the digital by imposing a restriction on the otherwise limitless capacity of our technology. Before every press of the shutter release we need to ask whether this is an image which should be printed into existence.
Film demanded some intention by design. What was considered a flaw of film during the advent of digital was its limit of 24 or 36 frames per roll. Every single shutter release would bring the photographer one exposure closer to winding the negatives back into their housing to later be processed in a darkroom. There was (is) an economic calculation in photography, particularly as film became more expensive.
Digital promised to eliminate that pressure. And it did. But art which thrived on the scarcity of a product was replaced with an abundance of digital files, which may or may not possess any element of inspiration or intention. Hence, a self-imposed restriction: is this picture worth printing? My CF Express card can fit over 1,500 RAW images at 48 megapixels. And like a bigger house, or a bigger backpack, more space often excuses more junk.
So rather than sell off your digital kit, it may be worth adopting, even temporarily, this habit of slowness, and intent, to preserve the virtue of picture taking: to make images that matter; if not to the world then at least to yourself.
Thoughts on AI and Photography in response to last night’s @ctforum :
The nature of photography is one of preserving fragments of reality and that is something Artificial Intelligence has neither the motivation nor the sentience to accomplish. Photographs are artifacts of precise record, and are captured at the free will and whim of people. One might say these images are shavings of truth and for all that AI is (or may become) it is not an inspired soul which considers and chooses the moments to chisel into eternity. AI generated art assembles visual content from a dataset, and thus never truly deals in the immediate unfolding of reality and the documenting of the pulsing, breathing, interactive nature of life. By definition, it cannot. Whatever conflict exists between the visual arts and the social values of profit and expediency, is not new. The struggle between unmitigated consumerism and our autonomy is carried into this new frontier. New players. Same game. And it is incumbent upon the creators to surge against addictive technology clutching at our very agency. So, let us put our minds to the deep work of imagining and create something beautiful from that deep ocean of conscience, virtue, and wonder that we call humanity.